Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

I always want more.

I didn't want to be greedy. It's a mark of bad character and I always believed that pigs go the slaughterhouse.

Greedy actors should never be satisfied.

I have no use for eight houses, 88 cars and 500 suits. I can't eat but one steak at a time. I don't want but one woman. It's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth.

Riches are not forbidden, but the pride of them is.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself, and holds a just balance between what he can acquire and what he can use.

We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.

I'm too vain, one of my biggest sins, but it saved me; I can see what excess does.

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more.

Our culture highlights the desire to always have more, even when we should be grateful for what we have.

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.

I always tried to live my life as though nothing changed. People would say, 'You can have a Rolls-Royce'. I'd say to that, 'What do I want with a Rolls-Royce when I can have a Volkswagen or a bike?' Some people get carried away with the juice.

You want to have a toy and another toy, and that's not maturity. The biggest things in life are not materials.

The point is that you can't be too greedy.

People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable …. every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on... Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto.

We shall have to practise to lead our life on the basis of our needs, not under the influence of our greed.

There's a significant difference between greed and hunger. When you're greedy, you just want things. That's your only need. But when you're hungry for things, it's a mixture of need and want, which is more logical to me.

If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have.

Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.