Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Arthur Schopenhauer



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.

  
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

   
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

   
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

  
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

   
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

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

  
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.


  
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.


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.
    
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

 I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
  
Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
   
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

 If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

   
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
   
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

 It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

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

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
  
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
  
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.


In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.


The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
  
It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

 It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

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

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.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

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

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

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.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

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

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

 Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.


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