Quotations by Schopenhauer

Compassion for animals is so intimately bound up with goodness of character that one may confidently assert that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

• On Moral circle, their position: Pathocentrism75%

Every amorous attachment, however ethereal it may pretend to be, has its roots in the sexual instinct alone.

• On Nature of love, their position: Ruse of the species70%

It is no more necessary for the saint to be a philosopher than 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 great sculptor to be a beautiful person.

• On Bodily pleasures, their position: Asceticism93%

Man is at bottom a wild and terrible animal.

• On Vision of humanity, their position: Anthropological pessimism93%

Optimism, when it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words beneath their flat foreheads, seems to me not only an absurd but a truly wicked way of thinking: a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity.

• On Tonality of reality, their position: Tragic thought98%

Philosophy can never do more than interpret and explain what exists.

• On The point of philosophy, their position: Understanding the world60%

So life swings like a pendulum, back and forth, between pain and boredom.

• On Relation to desire, their position: Extinction and detachment90%

The act of will and the movement of the body are not two objectively known states linked by causality; they are one and the same thing.

• On Being or having a body, their position: The lived body90%

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride.

• On Belonging, their position: Cosmopolitanism80%

The world is my representation.

• On Nature of reality, their position: Idealism90%

This compassion alone is the actual basis of all free justice and all genuine loving-kindness.

• On Status of emotions, their position: The primacy of feeling88%

To all who are still filled with the will, what remains after its complete abolition is assuredly nothing. But conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, it is this very real world of ours, with all its suns and galaxies, that is nothing.

• On The meaning of life, their position: Renunciation85%

To forgive and forget is to throw out of the window precious experience that one has dearly bought.

• On Forgiveness, their position: Conditionalism75%

You can do what you will; but at any given moment of your life you can will only one determinate thing, and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.

• On Freedom of the will, their position: Hard determinism90%