Essays of Schopenhauer

But we can see often enough something that is even still worse. I mean a carter walking alone, and without any horses, through the streets incessantly cracking his whip. He has...

Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of _not_ reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great publ...

Hence, the first rule--nay, this in itself is almost sufficient for a good style--is this, _that the author should have something to say_. Ah! this implies a great deal. The neg...

Nevertheless, if a big woman choose a big husband, in order, perhaps, to present a better appearance in society, the children, as a rule, suffer for her folly. Again, another ve...

ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE ON NOISE ON EDUCATION ON READING AND BOOKS THE EMPTINESS OF EXISTENCE ON WOMEN THINKING FOR ONESELF SHORT DIALOGUE ON THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR TRUE B...

Schopenhauer meanwhile was working out his philosophical system, the idea of his principal philosophical work. "Under my hands," he wrote in 1813, "and still more in my mind gro...

That the sudden announcement of some good fortune may easily have a fatal effect on us is due to the fact that our happiness and unhappiness depend upon the relation of our dema...

We have an analogy to this in India in the _Thugs_, a religious body quite recently suppressed by the English, who executed numbers of them. They showed their regard for religio...

Our memory is like a sieve, that with time and use holds less and less; in so far, namely, as the older we get, the quicker anything we have entrusted to our memory slips throug...

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written...

_Phil._ I express it only as a hope; but to give it up is impossible. In that case, if truth were in a simpler and more comprehensible form, it would surely soon drive religion...

That the most perfect manifestation of the _will to live_, which presents itself in the extremely subtle and complicated machinery of the human organism, must fall to dust and f...

As a matter of fact, the genius of the species is at continual warfare with the guardian genius of individuals; it is its pursuer and enemy; it is always ready to relentlessly d...

In the West, the woman, that is to say the "lady," finds herself in a _fausse position_; for woman, rightly named by the ancients _sexus sequior_, is by no means fit to be the o...

According to the degree, on the other hand, it will be the more powerful the more _individualised_ it is--that is to say, the more the loved individual, by virtue of all her qua...

And in theory it is just the same: a man must wait for the right moment; even the greatest mind is not always able to think for itself at all times. Therefore it is advisable fo...

_Phil_. But false oaths are still oftener sworn, whereby truth and right are trodden underfoot with the clear knowledge of all the witnesses of the act. An oath is the jurist's...

Concerning our physiognomy in general, it is still to be observed that it is much easier to discover the intellectual capacities of a man than his moral character. The intellect...

Accordingly, Christianity does not only preach Justice, but the _Love of Mankind, Compassion, Charity, Reconciliation, Love of one's Enemies, Patience, Humility, Renunciation, F...