Browse 10 quotations connecting Arthur Schopenhauer with Identity, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Wisdom of Life, Counsels and Maxims, The Art of Literature. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Wisdom of Life, Counsels and Maxims, The Art of Literature.
“We have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people.”
Conformity is described as costly when fitting in requires surrendering too much individuality, judgment, or temperament.
Source note: Counsels and Maxims, in Schopenhauer’s discussion of society and individuality; T. Bailey Saunders translation.
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
Schopenhauer links solitude with freedom from the constant accommodation that social life requires, especially for strongly individual temperaments.
Source note: Counsels and Maxims, chapter on our relation to others, translated by T. Bailey Saunders.
“a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”
Accumulated information is distinguished from understanding: Schopenhauer values knowledge that has been actively compared, connected and reconsidered over a larger but unprocessed store.
Source note: The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The library analogy immediately precedes the sentence.
“Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are pleased to think.”
Dependence on approval can turn other people’s judgments into a form of control; self-respect requires allowing outside opinion to inform rather than govern one’s sense of worth.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life; the sentence appears in Schopenhauer’s criticism of giving excessive weight to reputation and social opinion.
“What a man is, and so what he has in his own person, is always the chief thing to consider.”
The line directs attention toward qualities carried within the person rather than status or possessions, grounding a durable sense of value in character, capacity, and inner life.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life; Schopenhauer develops a three-part distinction between what a person is, what a person has, and what a person represents in the eyes of others.
“So the first and most essential element in our life's happiness is what we are,—our personality”
The line locates a central condition of happiness in personality because it accompanies a person across changing circumstances, possessions and public opinion.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The surrounding argument contrasts what a person is, has and represents to others.
“What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others.”
Schopenhauer places personal character and inner constitution above possessions and reputation, making well-being depend more on what a person is than on external valuation.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life; T. Bailey Saunders’s public-domain translation distinguishes what a person is from possessions and from the opinions of other people.
“It would be a miserable existence which should make its value or want of value depend upon what other people think.”
A life whose value rises and falls with public opinion has no stable center; Schopenhauer argues for locating worth somewhere less volatile than other people’s changing judgments.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life; Schopenhauer criticizes the habit of measuring the value of one’s existence by reputation or the fluctuating opinions of others.
“What a man is and has in himself,—in a word personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare.”
Personality is presented as the nearest and most continuous condition of well-being, because possessions and reputation affect life only through the person who experiences them.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life; Schopenhauer argues that personality has a more direct relation to happiness than property, rank, or external opinion.
“For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions”
Schopenhauer ranks enduring personal qualities above possessions, placing character and inner resources closer to the center of life than external ownership.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The sentence continues by contrasting inner qualities with social reputation.