Essays and Aphorisms

Arthur Schopenhauer believed that human life is fundamentally suffering — that desire leads inevitably to frustration, that satisfaction produces only boredom, and that the cycle repeats without end. He also believed that there is a way through: through art, through compassion, and through the gradual, disciplined renunciation of the will. This is not a cheerful philosophy. It is, however, an honest one — and Schopenhauer presents it with a wit and a directness that make these late essays among the most readable in the entire history of philosophy.

Selected from his Parerga and Paralipomena of 1851, the essays and aphorisms gathered here cover suffering, happiness, women, books and reading, thinking for oneself, noise, suicide, death, and the persistent gap between what people say they believe and how they actually behave. Schopenhauer is one of philosophy’s great quotable writers — almost every page contains a sentence worth remembering.

The ideal introduction to a philosopher who influenced Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner — and who still, a hundred and seventy years later, sees human nature with startling accuracy. R.J. Hollingdale’s translation is the standard English text. Published by Penguin Classics.