Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.

NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long life. preface to the second edition of "the world as will and representation

If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.