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He looks unconventional and grimly determined, but the sparkle in his eye is that of someone vigilant, incisive, and capable of mischief

he had also inherited his father's intense, obsessive personality. His father's death in 1805, probably by suicide, was a great blow to him.

see company as like a fire 'at which the prudent man warms himself at a distance

Nature has done more than is necessary to isolate my heart, in that she endowed it with suspicion, sensitiveness, vehemence and pride'

originally intended to study medicine; but he soon gravitated towards philosophy.

Schopenhauer thinks ordinary existence must involve the dual miseries of pain and boredom, insisting that it is in the very essence of humanity, indeed of the world as a whole, that it should be so.

there have been few philosophers who have equalled Schopenhauer's grasp of literary architecture and pacing, and few whose prose style is so eloquent.

an affair with Caroline Richter, a chorus girl at the National Theatre

recreation - theatre, opera, walking, playing the flute, dining out, and reading The Times in the town's library.

This essay was rewarded with a gold medal by the Norwegians.

Finale I now stand weary at the end of the road; The jaded brow can hardly bear the laurel

manner of unfettered probing and blunt questioning, on his demolition of traditional certainties and on the new insecurities he confronts.

The human individual is embodied and restlessly active, an animal who strives and suffers, whose core is sexuality and egoism.

Life has no purpose. Being ourselves is not something which has any positive value.