Q0399

Arthur Schopenhauer

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

What a person is stands far more in his power than what he has.
Thinker Arthur Schopenhauer
School Philosophy of Will
Source Parerga and Paralipomena, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life
Theme Character
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Parerga and Paralipomena, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, within the tradition of Philosophy of Will. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of character, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Arthur Schopenhauer's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Arthur Schopenhauer. (n.d.). What a person is stands far more in his power than what he has. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0399

MLA: Arthur Schopenhauer. “What a person is stands far more in….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0399.

Chicago: Arthur Schopenhauer. “What a person is stands far more in….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0399.

Same thinker

More from Arthur Schopenhauer

  1. The world is my representation.
  2. Compassion is the basis of morality.
  3. Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
  4. Solitude is the lot of all outstanding minds.
  5. All life is suffering.

All quotations by Arthur Schopenhauer

Same theme

More on character

  1. A person's character is their destiny.
  2. Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
  3. Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
  4. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.
  5. The Master said: Only when the year turns cold do we know that the pine and cypress are the last to wither.

Browse the character theme