Quote #117

Ultimately, death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot and it plays with its prey only for a while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible - just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.

More from Arthur Schopenhauer

  1. There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is general…
  2. There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.
  3. The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general and when only its most significant features are emphasised, is really a trag…
  4. There is no Kantian-Fichtean philosophy: there is Kantian philosophy and there is Fichtean humbug.
  5. The less a man is forced to come into contact with others, the better off he is.
  6. We find ourselves like a hollow glass globe, from whose vacancy a voice speaks.
  7. Talent hits a target no-one else can hit; genius hits targets no-one else can see.
  8. We have to regard art as the greater enhancement, the more perfect development of all this; for essentially it achieves just the same thing…

All Arthur Schopenhauer quotes