Arthur Schopenhauer

“Qualsiasi uomo notevole, chiunque cioè non appartenga a quei 5/6 dell'umanità dotati tanto miseramente dalla natura, rimarrà dopo i quarant'anni difficilmente esente da una certa traccia di...”

“A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man”

“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”

“Truth is most beautiful undraped.”

“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. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the...”

“Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.”

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

“They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice... That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable...”

“Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.”

“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.”

“He who is without hope is also without fear. - On Psychology”

“Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.”

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”

“A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thought...”

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.”

“Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...”

“It is easy to understand that in the dreary middle ages the Aristotelian logic would be very acceptable to the controversial spirit of the schoolmen, which, in the absence of all real knowle...”

“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 to you than a...”

“Lack of the power to discriminate is no less evident in the sciences, namely in the tenacious life of false and refuted theories. Once come into general credit, they continue to defy truth f...”