13 quotations linked to The Wisdom of Life by or associated with Arthur Schopenhauer, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Personality, happiness, self-worth, reputation, independence from approval, and the difference between what a person is, has, and represents.
The wording shown here follows the represented English edition or translation.
Translations and editions can differ in wording, punctuation and emphasis, so the source attached to each quotation matters when exact phrasing is important.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met”
The maxim shifts attention from events alone to the way a person receives and interprets them, making response and temperament part of Schopenhauer’s account of well-being.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. This is a philosophical claim about temperament, not a denial that external circumstances can matter greatly.
“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.
“The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it, and so it proves different to different men”
Schopenhauer emphasizes interpretation as a major part of lived experience: the same world can appear very different depending on the qualities and habits of the person perceiving it.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The claim belongs to Schopenhauer’s philosophical account of personality and subjective experience.
“The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess”
Within his restrictive view of personality, Schopenhauer still assigns agency to choosing pursuits that use and develop one’s actual capacities rather than leaving them idle or mismatched.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The following clause recommends pursuits suited to the development of one’s capacities.
“it is manifestly a wiser course to aim at the maintenance of our health and the cultivation of our faculties, than at the amassing of wealth”
Schopenhauer contrasts cultivating personal capacities with treating accumulation as the main aim, placing development of the person above wealth as a measure of a good life.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The sentence belongs to a philosophical comparison of personality, possessions and reputation, not financial advice.
“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.
“leading an existence rich in thought and full of life and meaning, occupied by worthy and interesting objects as soon as ever he is free to give himself to them”
Schopenhauer describes a meaningful intellectual life as one filled by sustained engagement with worthy objects of thought rather than by external stimulation alone.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The wording belongs to Schopenhauer’s contrast between intellectual and ordinary forms of leisure.
“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.
“by the constant growth of insight and knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming work of art, will acquire a consistency, a permanent intensity, a unity which becomes ever more and more complete”
The image treats intellectual development as cumulative craftsmanship: insight and knowledge gradually produce greater coherence instead of appearing as a single finished achievement.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The simile compares a developing intellectual life with a slowly formed work of art.