The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.
Arthur SchopenhauerConsciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.
Arthur Schopenhauer