Famous Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes Explained
Arthur Schopenhauer was a 19th-century German philosopher best known for his metaphysical pessimism and his theory of the world as will and representation. Schopenhauer's <em>The World as Will and Representation</em> (1818) and the popular <em>Parerga and Paralipomena</em> (1851) supplied modern pessimism with its slogans. Below are eight of the most-quoted lines.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen... | Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844 | As cited in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy: Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 137
What it means
From The World as Will and Representation, in Schopenhauer's discussion of artistic genius. Schopenhauer distinguishes talent — exceptional skill within an existing problem-space — from genius, which redefines the problem-space itself by recognising possibilities others did not perceive at all.
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
Psychological Observations
What it means
From the Parerga and Paralipomena. Schopenhauer's epistemic observation is that most people mistake the range of their own attention for the structure of reality, treating what they have not encountered as if it could not exist. The line is one of his most-quoted aphorisms on intellectual humility.
Attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer:
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.”
What it means
From The Wisdom of Life in the Parerga and Paralipomena. Schopenhauer's claim is that social presentation requires a constant minor self-betrayal, since the demands of company never exactly match one's own; only in solitude is the suspension of pretence possible.
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
What it means
From The Wisdom of Life. Schopenhauer's diagnostic of conformity: the social cost of standing apart pressures people into adjustments that, accumulated, amount to surrendering most of what made them distinctively themselves.
“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.
What it means
From On the Basis of Morality (1840), Schopenhauer's most extended ethical treatise. Compassion (Mitleid) is the metaphysical recognition that the suffering of another is not external to oneself, since the boundary between self and other is an illusion of representation.
Attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer:
“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
What it means
From the Parerga and Paralipomena. Schopenhauer's pair states a Stoic-derived conclusion: external sources of happiness are unreliable because they depend on conditions the agent does not control; the only durable source is the agent's own disposition, even though cultivating it is hard.
“Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.”
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 347
What it means
From the Parerga and Paralipomena. Schopenhauer applies the metaphor of seawater to wealth and desire generally: consumption of the very thing one craves intensifies the craving rather than relieving it. The maxim is one of his most-quoted statements on the futility of acquisitive lives.
“The world is my representation.”
From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999
What it means
Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung — the opening sentence of The World as Will and Representation (1818). Schopenhauer's first move is Kantian: the world we know is the world as it appears to a mind structured to receive it, not the world as it is in itself.