Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit
First sentence
IN these pages I shall speak of The Wisdom of Life in the common meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success; an art the theory of which may be called Eudoemonology, for it teaches us how to lead a happy existence...
Description
Nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) championed individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation above the irrational impulses that animated most of society. In The Wisdom of Life, taken from his last work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), he discusses how to order our lives to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success; then he offers guidelines for living life to its fullest. But for Schopenhauer a life well lived should always reach beyond itself to a higher plane.

