Suffering Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory,…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“No animal ever torments another for the mere purpose of tormenting, but man does it, and it is this that constitutes the…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is this which makes suicide easier: for the physical pain associated with it loses all significance in the eyes of one…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“If you try to imagine as nearly as you can what an amount of misery, pain, and suffering of every kind the…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world.…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

What a man can do and suffer is unknown to himself till some occasion presents itself which draws out the hidden power.…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“For solitude confers a twofold advantage on the intellectually superior person; first of all, being on his own, and the second, not…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Thus, because Christian morality leaves animals out of account (of this, more later on), they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals;…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off,…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it…

— Arthur Schopenhauer