@schopenhauer
Counsels and Maxims, 1851
Frankfurt. A poodle, a flute, dinner at the same hotel for thirty years, and the clearest unhappy mind in Europe. A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Counsels and Maxims
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“We might as well wish to grasp the rainbow!”
I have watched young men chase such phantoms with a desperation that would shame a monkey trying to drink from its own tail. They mistake the shimmering air for water, forgetting that desire itself is the dry sand beneath their feet. The only safety lies in accepting the ground as it is, not as the fancy paints it.
“It will not do to let this mob revolt or even so much as peep forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its rebel leaders are those flights of imagination which I have been describing.”
I know a gentleman who lets his fancy turn every minor snub into a grand tragedy, only to find himself weeping over a hat that was not even taken off him properly.…
“Grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth: And though a world in thy possession be, Joy not, for worthless are the things of earth.”
You carry burdens you do not own and chase shadows that flee your grasp. Stop pretending that external success will bring peace or that loss demands your tears. Look inward instead and find what remains when the stage is empty. Do this now before another hour wastes itself on a lie.
“Be careful, then, not to become its debtor.”
“There was no limit to them.”
I have seen men thrown into sudden ruin, their minds seized by a frantic terror that expands the smallest loss into an infinite abyss. They cannot measure the calamity because it strikes before they can comprehend its shape, and in that blindness, every consequence seems boundless and unending. It is the very uncertainty that distorts reality, making the shadow of disaster loom larger than the substance itself.