The love of a man often affords comical, and sometimes also tragical phenomena
 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation

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Author Arthur Schopenhauer
Source The World as Will and Representation
Topic love
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

“In tragedies containing love affairs, since the aims of the species are frustrated, the lovers who were its tools, generally perish also; for example, in “Romeo and Juliet,” “Tancred,” “Don Carlos,” “Wallenstein,” “The Bride of Messina,” and many others. The love of a man often affords comical, and sometimes also tragical phenomena; both because, taken possession of by the spirit of the species, he is now ruled by this, and no longer belongs to himself: his conduct thereby becomes unsuited to the individual. That which in the higher grades of love imparts such a tinge of poetry and sublimeness to his thoughts, which gives them even a transcendental and hyperphysical tendency, on account of which he seems to lose sight altogether of his real, very physical aim, is at bottom this, that he is now inspired by the spirit of the species whose affairs are infinitely more important than all those which concern mere individuals, in order to find” source