Lakhya 3 > Lakhya's Quotes

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”
― arthur schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“the world is my idea”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right

“Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature

“The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Works of Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays

“What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others...”
― Schopenhauer

“Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Vanity of Existence

“Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could have easily have been found already written in a book: but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed ; thus it will stay firmly and forever lodged in your mind.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."

[The Minotaur]”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague