Schopenhauer Quotes
This page contains, and links to, some great depressing quotes (and some happy quotes).
- Depressing quotes, favourite: "Human existence must be a kind of error...it may be said of it, 'it is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens'." - Schopenhauer quotes #1, depressing quotes #1.
Schopenhauer Quotes: On Life
"We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness."
"I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death ... This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings."
"Life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it is not worth the trouble of major effort."
Schopenhauer Quotes: On Happiness
"There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence...hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment."
"What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams ... and we search in vain for their original ... Much would have been gained if through timely advice and instruction young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them."
Schopenhauer Quotes: Short & Sweet
"A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt."
"The less a man is forced to come into contact with others, the better off he is."
"There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity."
"Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour"
"To call the world ‘God’ is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word ‘world’."
Search for more Schopenhauer quotes in the Dictionary of Famous Quotes