Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life Quotes

“Welch ein greller Kontrast ist doch zwischen der Empfindlichkeit der meisten Leute über die leiseste Andeutung eines sie treffenden Tadels und dem, was sie hören würden, wenn sie die Gespräche ihrer Bekannten über sie belauschten!

Che stridente contrasto vi è mai tra la suscettibilità della maggior parte delle persone al minimo accenno di un biasimo che le riguardi, e quello che esse sentirebbero se origliassero i discorsi che i loro conoscenti fanno su di loro!”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life: An Essay by Arthur Schopenhauer

“Many live too long in the present - frivolous people, I mean; others, too much in the future, ever anxious and full of care. It is seldom that a man holds the right balance between the two extremes. Those who strive and hope and live only in the future, always looking ahead and impatiently anticipating what is coming, as something which will make them happy when they get it, are, in spite of their clever airs, exactly like those donkeys one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a stick on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it; this is always just in front of them, and they keep on trying to get it. Such people are in a constant state of illusion as to their whole existence; they go on living ad interim, until at last they die.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life: An Essay by Arthur Schopenhauer