If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost.
The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
No one can transcend their own individuality.
Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.
That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
Copyrighted © 2021 — Quotation.io. All rights reserved.
