"If a big diamond is cut up into pieces, it immediately loses its value as a whole; or if an army is scattered or divided into small bodies, it loses all its power; and in the same way a great intellect has no more power than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed, distracted, or diverted; for its superiority entails that it concentrates all its strength on one point and object, just as a concave mirror concentrates all the rays of light thrown upon it. Noisy interruption prevents this concentration. This is why the most eminent intellects have always been strongly averse to any kind of disturbance, interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent interruption which is caused by noise; other people do not take any particular notice of this sort of thing."

"So that it will be found that the fundamental fault in the character of women is that they have no “sense of justice .” This arises from their deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an ineradicable tendency to lie."

"A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author’s thoughts [Ein Buch kann nie mehr seyn, als der Abdruck der Gedanken des Verfassers]. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has thought about it."

"In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods."

"Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world."

"The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word "world"."

"Alles Wollen entspringt aus Bedürfnis, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden."

"To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further."

"For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted."

"Der allgemeine Ueberblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile."

"As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old servant performed for him a so-called service of love. My mother gave parties while he was perishing in solitude, and amused herself while he was suffering bitter agonies"

"A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine."

"...in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht."

"If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?"

"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."

"When the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion, reason is totally incompetent and blind, and its use to be reprehended, this really attests the fact that these dogmas are allegorical in their nature, and are not to be judged by the standard which reason, taking all things sensu proprio, can alone apply. Now the absurdities of a dogma are just the mark and sign of what is allegorical and mythical in it. In the case under consideration, however, the absurdities spring from the fact that two such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and New Testaments had to be combined. The great allegory was of gradual growth. Suggested by external and adventitious circumstances, it was developed by the interpretation put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touch with certain deep-lying truths only half realised. The allegory was finally completed by Augustine, who penetrated deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as a systematic whole and supply its defects."

"There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life."

"Das Bedenkliche bei der Sache ist auch bloß die doch einzuräumende Möglichkeit, daß die letzte dem Menschen erreichbare Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge, in sein eigenes Wesen und das der Welt nicht gerade zusammenträfe mit den Lehren, welche theils dem ehemaligen Völkchen der Juden eröffnet worden, theils vor 1800 Jahren in Jerusalem aufgetreten sind."

"The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others."

"When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment."

"The surest means of not losing your mind on the spot: remembering that everything is unreal, and will remain so..."

"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one."

"What a judgment upon the living, if it is true, as has been maintained, that what dies has never existed!"

"To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked."

"For a writer, to change languages is to write a love letter with a dictionary."

"Except for music, everything is a lie, even solitude, even ecstasy. Music, in fact, is the one and the other, only better."

"A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after an autopsy, is less than a corpse."

"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."

"Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself."

"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland — and no other."

"Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream."

"To resign oneself or to blow out one's brains, that is the choice one faces at certain moments. In any case, the only real dignity is that of exclusion."

"When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve."

"The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!"

"We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false."

"If I were to go blind, what would bother me the most would be no longer to be able to stare idiotically at the passing clouds."

"Try as I will, I don't see what might exist..."

"Hope is the normal form of delirium."

"Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived."

"All morning, I did nothing but repeat: "Man is an abyss, man is an abyss." — I could not, alas, find anything better."

"Even more than in a poem, it is the aphorism that the word is god."

"Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that..."

"You really should come to the house — one of these days we might die without having seen each other again." — "Since we have to die in any case, what's the use of seeing each other again?"

"What is not heartrending is superfluous, at least in music."

"We regret not having the courage to make such and such decision; we regret much more having made one — any one. Better no action than the consequences of an action."

"It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life, but what else is there to say?"

"To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment."

"My mission is to see things as they are. Exactly the contrary of a mission."

"Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!"

"What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts."