Quote collection
571 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having; and that on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life"
"All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering."
"As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them."
"Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred."
"A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time."
"Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time."
"For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it."
"Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood."
"Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)"
"Wir tappen im Labyrinth unsers Lebenswandels und im Dunkel unserer Forschungen umher: helleAugenblicke erleuchten dabei wie Blitze unsernWeg. We grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lightning."
"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."
"How entirely does the Upanishad breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul !"
"Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire"
"It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse."
"If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world."
"It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them."
"Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction."
"The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it."
"Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes."
"Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world."