If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

life perspective interest

About Arthur Schopenhauer

Portrait of 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

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

pleasure pain sacrifice

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.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

time death infinity individuality existentialism

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

—Arthur Schopenhauer

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.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

kindness morality compassion

More quotations tagged with “interest”

To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.

—Andrew Wyeth

interest superficiality technique

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.

Every man has his follies—and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.

—Josh Billings

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

writing novels interest

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

mind fire energy interest

History

23 Mar 2016 Added