Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent hits a target no one else can hit, Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read 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.

Journalists are like dogs - whenever anything moves they begin to bark.

The wise have always said the same things and fools who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other, and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism a pensioner as it were who dwells with the body.

There is no doubt that life is given us not to be enjoyed but to be overcome, to be got over.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

To find out your real opinion of someone judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

A man can do what he wants but not want what he wants.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault to speak as he writes, for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.