Arthur Schopenhauer

Just as the female ant after coition loses her wings, which then become superfluous, nay, dangerous for breeding purposes, so for the most part does a woman lose her beauty after giving birth to one or two children; and probably for the same reasons.

She pays the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers—by the pains of child-bearing, care for the child, and by subjection to man, to whom she should be a patient and cheerful companion.

Man reaches the maturity of his reasoning and mental faculties scarcely before he is eight-and-twenty; woman when she is eighteen; but hers is reason of very narrow limitations.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from others.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.