quotes by Schopenhauer

"To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived."
— Schopenhauer

"To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't. "
— Schopenhauer

"A book is like a mirror. If an ass looks into it, you cannot expect an angel to look out"
— Schopenhauer

"...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself."
— Schopenhauer

"the brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life."
— Schopenhauer

"The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts."
— Schopenhauer

"Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it."
— Schopenhauer

"...it is only the hope of what is claimed that begets and nurishes the wish;"
— Schopenhauer

"Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction."
— Schopenhauer

"A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills."
— Schopenhauer