Chronology Videos Schopenhauer's writings Schopenhauer's writings online Family writings

Schopenhauer in England Writings about Schopenhauer Writings about Schopenhauer online Quotes



[Last updated: 11 December 2019]





   'For the world is Hell,
   and men are,
   on the one hand,
   the tormented souls;
   and on the other,
   the devils in it'.
   Arthur Schopenhauer,
    Parerga and Paralipomena
     (1851).
'Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will,but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience inthe face of the hardships of life, my own and others.
This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view oflife in which humour, above all,has its due place.'
Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (Filiquarian Publishing, 2006 (orig 1934)).


'Life is a tricky business: I've decided to spend it, trying to understand it'.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1812), quoted by Bryan Magee in The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), p.3.


"The Schopenhauers’ tour [beginning 1803] continued on through England, Holland, France and Switzerland and it deeply affected the young Schopenhauer, who was shocked by the dreadful social conditions he frequently encountered. Later, he would compare his experiences on his tour to the Buddha’s life transforming experiences…
Schopenhauer’s experiences moved him to no longer think of this world as the creation of an all-bountiful, good being; it appeared instead to be the work of a devil who created its creatures in order to gloat over their agony and misery’.
David Cartwright, Historical Dictionary of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, Lanham: 2005), p.xxiii


'Schopenhauer is known for his brilliant writing style as well as for being a unique thinker. Generations of general readers and scholars have found his ideas stimulating and insightful and have found his writings delightfully easy to read in original and in translations.
Schopenhauer's attractive writing style is free of the usual conceptual web spinnings and hair-splitting arguments for which other philosophers, especially European philosophers are notorious'.
R. Raj Singh, Schopenhauer: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2010), p.xi.
'For whoever has been lonely all his life will be a better judge than others of this solitary business. Instead of going out amid the nonsense and foolishness calculated for the impoverished capacity of human bipeds, I will end joyfully conscious of returning to the place where I started out so highly endowed of fulfilling my mission'.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Der Handschriftliche Nachlass (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970), 5 vols., Vol 4,. p.127.


'But against the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds...If it were a little worse, it would be no longer capable of continuing to exist... Consequently, since a worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worse of all possible worlds'.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. II, ch. 46.


'Philosophy is a high mountain road which is reached only by a steep path covered with sharp stones and prickly thorns. It is an isolated road and becomes ever more desolate, the higher we ascend. Whoever pursues this path must show no fear, but must leave everything behind and confidently make his own way in the wintry snow...
He soon sees the world beneath him...its jarring sounds no longer reach his ear...He himself is always in the pure cool mountain air and now beholds the sun, when all below is still engulfed in dead of night'.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains, vol. I,p.14


'Schopenhauer was one of the first Western philosophers to recognize and argue for the rights of animals, condemning the cruelty to animals in many of his own writings'.
R. Raj Singh, Schopenhauer: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2010), p.117.


'But man, that selfish and heartless creature, misuses this quality of the brute to be more content than we are with mere existence, and often works it to such an extent that he allows the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life. The bird which was made so that it might rove over half of the world, he shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there to die a slow death in longing and crying for freedom; for in a cage it does not sing for the pleasure of it. And when I see how man misuses the dog, his best friend; how he ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel the deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation against its master'.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 'On the suffering of the world', Essays and Aphorisms (London: Penguin. 1970), p.47.
'He [Schopenhauer] loved animals and his permanent sense of the reality behind the phrase 'nature red in tooth and claw' was like an unhealing wound; he actually felt the fact at every single moment... Thousands of screaming animals are in the process of being torn to pieces alive. This alone, he thought, is enough to make the world a terrible place...so vivid was his sense of the cruelty, violence and aimlessness of both animal and human worlds that it amounted to a horror of life as such. He believed it would have been better for most living creatures never to have been born'.
Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), p.154.


'Once you see the truth, this becomes a very difficult world to live in'.
Veganoso





Chronology Videos Schopenhauer's writings Schopenhauer's writings online Family writings Schopenhauer in England Writings about Schopenhauer Writings about Schopenhauer online Quotes Dicken Shailen Pillay Mardaymootoo