As an individual, with your death there will be an end of you. But your individuality is not your true and final being, indeed it is rather the mere expression of it,… only the phenomenon presented in the form of time, and accordingly has both a beginning and an end. Your being in itself, on the contrary, knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a given individuality.… So that, in the first sense, after death you become nothing; in the second, you are and remain everything.

About Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), also known as the “Philosopher of Pessimism”, was a German philosopher and writer. He is known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and...

More quotations from Arthur Schopenhauer

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

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The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.

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Compassion is the basis of all morality.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

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Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

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More quotations tagged with “infinity”

Endless money forms the sinews of war.

—Cicero

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Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

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There is a fifth dimension beyond those known to man. It is a dimension vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between the pit of his fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area called the Twilight Zone.

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Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

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History

1 Jan 2016 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

As an individual, with your death there will be an end of you. But your individuality is not your true and final being, indeed it is rather the mere expression of it, . . . only the phenomenon presented in the form of time, and accordingly has both a beginning and an end. Your being in itself, on the contrary, knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a given individuality. . . . So that, in the first sense, after death you become nothing; in the second, you are and remain everything.