Studies in Pessimism And On Human Nature Quotes

“When you come into contact with a man, no matter whom, do not attempt an objective appreciation of him according to his worth and dignity. Do not consider his bad will, or his narrow understanding and perverse ideas; as the former may easily lead you to hate and the latter to despise him; but fix your attention only upon his sufferings, his needs, his anxieties, his pains. Then you will always feel your kinship with him; you will sympathise with him; and instead of hatred or contempt you will experience the commiseration that alone is the peace to which the Gospel calls us. The way to keep down hatred and contempt is certainly not to look for a man’s alleged “dignity”, but, on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism And On Human Nature

“It seems to me that the idea of dignity can be applied only in an ironical sense to a being whose will is so sinful, whose intellect is so limited, whose body is so weak and perishable as Man’s. How shall a man be proud, when his conception is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a necessity! (Quid superbit homo? Cujus conceptio culpa, nasci pœna, labor vita, necesse mori!)”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism And On Human Nature

“A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism And On Human Nature

“Every man is confined to the limits of his own mind.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism And On Human Nature