When one considers how vast and how close to us is the problem of existence–this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence of ours–so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when one sees how all men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear consciousness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite unaware of its presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than with this, and live on, taking no thought but for the passing day and the hardly longer span of their own personal future, either expressly discarding the problem or else over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting some system of popular metaphysics and letting it satisfy them; when, I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the opinion that man may be said to be a thinking being only in a very remote sense, and henceforth feel no special surprise at any trait of human thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather, that the normal man’s intellectual range of vision does indeed extend beyond that of the brute, whose whole existence is, as it were, a continual present, with no consciousness of the past or the future, but not such an immeasurable distance as is generally supposed. Schopenhauer
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
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Winston S. Churchill
The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.
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Joe Abercrombie
But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible.
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Jane Austen
It takes a very long time to become young.
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Pablo Picasso
Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.
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Joe Abercrombie
More Quotes By Schopenhauer
On a cold winter’s day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one another’s quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They...
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to...
When one considers how vast and how close to us is the problem of existence–this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence of ours–so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when...
Genuine tranquility of the heart and perfect peace of mind, the highest blessings on earth after health, are to be found only in solitude and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclusion.
The first forty years of life give us the text the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
