"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
"At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it."
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Source: The World as Will and Representation, Volume II (On the Vanity and Suffering of Life). Book by Arthur Schopenhauer (1819), as translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (p. 389), 1886.
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"It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else."
"The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority."
"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free."
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
"The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it."