Arthur Schopenhauer — "The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy."
The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
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More from Arthur Schopenhauer
"Man is the only animal that causes pain to others for the mere pleasure of doing it."
"Optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless chatter of fools, is not only a absurd doctrine, but also a truly wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity."
"The world is nothing but my representation."
"The only way to escape the suffering of life is to kill oneself."
"The world is a madhouse."
About Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
German philosopher of pessimism whose The World as Will and Representation (1819) defined the suffering-and-renunciation tradition. Closely associated with Immanuel Kant (the system Schopenhauer built on and revised). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the rational unfolding of Spirit — Schopenhauer scheduled his Berlin lectures opposite Hegel's and spent decades attacking Hegel's optimistic system as deliberately mystifying nonsense — the foundational rivalry of 19th-century German philosophy.
The standard scholarly entry points to Arthur Schopenhauer's work: Bryan Magee (Oxford, populariser-philosopher) — The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983); Christopher Janaway (Southampton, Schopenhauer specialist) — Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy (1989); David E. Cartwright (Wisconsin–Whitewater) — Schopenhauer: A Biography (2010). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Arthur Schopenhauer.