“ Life is deeply sunk in suffering, and cannot escape from it ”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation
Author | Arthur Schopenhauer |
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Source | The World as Will and Representation |
Topic | escape life |
Date | 1819 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40868/40868-h/40868-h.html |
Context
“This will give him indeed a wonderful composedness in all that may happen, similar to that with which a sick person who undergoes a long and painful cure bears the pain of it as a sign of its efficacy. In the whole of human existence suffering expresses itself clearly enough as its true destiny. Life is deeply sunk in suffering, and cannot escape from it; our entrance into it takes place amid tears, its course is at bottom always tragic, and its end still more so. There is an unmistakable appearance of intention in this. As a rule man's destiny passes through his mind in a striking manner, at the very summit of his desires and efforts, and thus his life receives a tragic tendency by virtue of which it is fitted to free him from the passionate desire of which every individual existence is an example, and bring him into such a condition that he parts with life without retaining a single desire for it and its pleasures.”
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