Arthur Schopenhauer

How learned many a man would be if he knew everything that was in his own books!

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.

However, the public is very much more interested in matter than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree of culture

This is why simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius.

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

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

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!—

Dissimulation is easiest in mere conversation; indeed, paradoxical as it may sound, it is fundamentally more difficult in a letter, since here a man, left to his own devices, looks into himself and not outwards.

With those other thinkers, he wills what he knows; with me he knows what he wills.

Suave, mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem:
Non, quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas;
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est.