Pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, "Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life", Parerga and Paralipomena
Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, "On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, The World as Will and Representation
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.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Essays and Aphorisms
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.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, "On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, The World as Will and Representation
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Studies in Pessimism
Of course, it is no easy matter to be polite; in so far, I mean, as it requires us to show great respect for everybody, whereas most people deserve none at all.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Counsels and Maxims
It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Counsels and Maxims
In general, one must have value oneself in order freely and willingly to acknowledge value in another. This is the basis for the requirement that modesty accompany all merits, as well as the disproportionately loud praise for this virtue which alone, among all its sisters, is always added to the praise of anyone distinguished in some way by the person who dares to praise him, so as to conciliate the worthless and silence their wrath. For what is modesty if not false humility which someone with merits and advantages in a world teeming with perfidious envy uses to beg the pardon of those who have none? Someone who does not lay claim to merit because he in fact has none is being honest, not modest.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, The World as Will and Representation
Rascals are always sociable--more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company. He prefers solitude more and more, and, in course of time, comes to see that, with few exceptions, the world offers no choice beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Collected Essays
It is a great folly to lose the inner man in order to gain the outer, that is, to give up the whole or the greater part of one's quiet, leisure, and independence for splendour, rank, pomp, titles and honours.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, "Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life", Parerga und Paralipomena
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Parerga and Paralipomena
