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"It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them, but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents."
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"A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual."

"You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else."

"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle."

"Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers."

"If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they - the Administration - believe."

"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider."

"Books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life."
Explore more quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

"How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?"

"For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it."

"We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success."

"Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see."

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανατου μελετη (thanatou meletē—the practice or study of death). Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise."

"If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it."

"Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions."

"Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable."

"Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness."
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