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The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

Book by Arthur Schopenhauer · 2 quotes · Suffering, Comedy, Death

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The World as Will and Representation, Volume I Quotes

“A person's being in love often furnishes comic, and sometimes even tragic, phenomena, both because, taken possession of by the spirit of the species, he is now ruled by it, and no longer belongs to himself; in this way his conduct becomes inappropriate to the individual. In the higher degrees of being in love, his thoughts are given such a poetical and sublime touch, even a transcendent and hyperphysical tendency, by virtue of which he appears wholly to lose sight of his real, very physical aim.”

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Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
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“Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager or even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel of our true nature, and of its continued existence in the species. But to regard this continued existence as something trifling and insufficient is a mistake, which arises from the fact that, by the continued life of the species, we understand nothing more than the future existence of beings similar to, but in no respect identical with, ourselves; and this again because, starting from knowledge directed outwards, we take into consideration only the external form of the species, as we apprehend this in perception, and not its inner nature.”

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Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
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