The World as Will and Representation Quotes

“It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

“For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none?

For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung

“The prayer “Lead me not into temptation” means: “Let me not see who I am.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I

“But history is really related to poetry as portrait painting to historical painting: the former gives us that which is true in the individual, the latter that which is true in general;”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I

“…Philosophy is essentially world-wisdom; its problem is the world. With this alone it has to do, and it leaves the gods in peace; but in return for this, it expects them to leave it in peace also.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“It seems to me that the doctrine of the laws of thought could be simplified if we were to set up only two, the law of excluded middle and that of sufficient reason. The former thus: "Every predicate can be either confirmed or denied of every subject." Here it is already contained in the "either, or" that both cannot occur simultaneously, and consequently just what is expressed by the laws of identity and contradiction. Thus these would be added as corollaries of that principle which really says that every two concept-spheres must be thought either as united or as separated, but never as both at once; and therefore, even although words are joined together which express the latter, these words assert a process of thought which cannot be carried out. The consciousness of this infeasibility is the feeling of contradiction. The second law of thought, the principle of sufficient reason, would affirm that the above attributing or refuting must be determined by something different from the judgment itself, which may be a (pure or empirical) perception, or merely another judgment. This other and different thing is then called the ground or reason of the judgment. So far as a judgment satisfies the first law of thought, it is thinkable; so far as it satisfies the second, it is true, or at least in the case in which the ground of a judgment is only another judgment it is logically or formally true.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject/perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“Only from their authors themselves can we receive philoso phical thoughts ; therefore whoever feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out its immortal teachers in the still sanctuary of their works. The principal chapters of any one of these true philosophers will afford a thousand times more insight into their doctrines than the heavy and distorted accounts of them that everyday men produce, who are still for the most part deeply en tangled in the fashionable philosophy of the time, or in the sentiments of their own minds. But it is astonish ing how decidedly the public seizes by preference on these expositions at second-hand. It seems really as if elective affinities were at work here, by virtue of which the common nature is drawn to its like, and therefore will rather hear what a great man has said from one of its own kind. Perhaps this rests on the same principle as that of mutual instruction, according to which children learn best from children.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“Reason recognized from this the fact that, both to lessen the suffering spread among everyone and to distribute it as uniformly as possible, the best and only means is to spare everyone the pain of suffering wrong by having everyone renounce the enjoyment attainable by wrongdoing.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I

“It is held to be unsuited to the preeminence of reason that beings who are gifted with it, who through it encompass and survey an infinitude of things and circumstances, should by the present and by the incidents contained in the few years of so brief, fleeting, and uncertain a life, be nonetheless prey to such intense pains, such great fear and suffering as arise from the tumultuous press of desire and avoidance, and supposed that proper application of reason should be able to lift a person up out of all that, to render him invulnerable.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I

“To the honor of Spinoza I must mention that his more accurate understanding explained all general concepts as having to the contrary arisen from an obfuscation of that of which one is perceptually cognizant”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I

“On the philosophy of the Asiatics; "Asiatic Researches", vol. IV, p. 164: "the fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Il mondo come volontà e rappresentazione

“Tragedy is to be regarded, and is recognised as the summit of poetical art, both on account of the greatness of its effect and the difficulty of its achievement.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this. Therefore there remained nothing for him to do but, instead of describing the joys of paradise, to repeat to us the instruction given him there by his ancestor, by Beatrice, and by various saints. But from this it is sufficiently clear what manner of world it is.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“The Vedanta and the Buddhists have long ago taught what we have to learn slowly and with difficulty in Europe, namely, that the world is not ultimately real, but illusion; and that happiness consists in renunciation, in freeing oneself from desires, and thereby from suffering.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“Few men think, yet all will have opinions”
― Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“There is something quite peculiar to be found in the deep, unconscious seriousness with which two young people of opposite sex regard each other when they meet for the first time. the searching and penetrating glance they cast at each other, the careful inspection all the features and parts of their respective persons have to undergo. This scrutiny and examination is the meditation of the genius of the species concerning the individual possible through these two, and the combination of its qualities. The degree of their mutual pleasure in and longing for each other proves to be in accordance with the result of this meditation. After this longing has reached a significant degree, it can be suddenly extinguished again by the discovery of something that had previously remained unobserved. In all who are capable of procreation, therefore, the genius of the species meditates thus concerning the race to come. The constitution of this race is the great work with which Cupid is occupied, incessantly active, speculating, and pondering. Compared with the importance of his great business concerning the species and all the generations to come, the affairs of individuals in all their ephemeral totality are very insignificant; hence he is always ready to sacrifice these arbitrarily. For he is related to them as an immortal is to mortals, and his interests are related to theirs as the infinite to the finite. Therefore, conscious of managing affairs of a higher order than all those that concern only individual weal and woe, he pursues them with sublime and undisturbed calm amid the tumult of war, in the turmoil of business life, or during the raging of a plague; and follows them even into the seclusion of the cloister.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics

“The works of the poets, sculptors, and representative artists in general contain an unacknowledged treasure of profound wisdom; just because out of them the wisdom of the nature of things itself speaks, whose utterances they merely interpret by illustrations and purer repetitions. On this account, however, every one who reads the poem or looks at the picture must certainly contribute out of his own means to bring that wisdom to light; accordingly he comprehends only so much of it as his capacity and culture admit of; as in the deep sea each sailor only lets down the lead as far as the length of the line will allow. Before a picture, as before a prince, every one must stand, waiting to see whether and what it will speak to him; and, as in the case of a prince, so here he must not himself address it, for then he would only hear himself.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: A Philosophical Foundation of Western Metaphysics and Aesthetics