Works of Arthur Schopenhauer

"Under my hands," he wrote in 1813, "and still more in my mind grows a work, a philosophy which will be an ethics and a metaphysics in one:-two branches which hitherto have been separated as falsely as man has been divided into soul and body. The work grows, slowly and gradually aggregating its parts like the child in the womb. I bec

since human nature makes us dependent on the opinion of others in a way that is completely out of proportion to its value.

A child would have fewer ideas, but they would be well-grounded and correct. It would learn to measure things according to its own standard and not according to another's. It would then never acquire a thousand whims and prejudices which must be eradicated by the greater part of subsequent experience and education. Its mind would henceforth be accu

What has been exists no more; and exists just as little as that which has never been. But everything that exists has been in the next moment. Hence something belonging to the present, however unimportant it may be, is superior to something important belonging to the past; this is because the former is a reality and related to the latter as somethin

This is because our head is full of ideas which we are now trying to make use of, but almost always apply wrongly. This is the result of ὑστερον προτερον (putting the cart before the horse), since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last;

A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author's thoughts. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter-that is to say, what he has thought about it.

The best works of great men all come from the time when they had to write either for nothing or for very little pay.

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 first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.

However, the principal thing must always be to let one's observations precede one's ideas, and not the reverse as is usually and unfortunately the case;

Hence religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful weak-mindedness of the great majority of mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and consequently when in extremity requires a substitute for truth.