In the first place, no man is happy but strives his whole life long after a supposed happiness which he seldom attains, and even if he does it is only to be disappointed with it.
on The Suffering Of The Worldby arthur Schopenhauer
One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.
Pleasure and well-being is negative and suffering positive, the happiness of a given life is not to be measured according to the joys and pleasures it contains but according to the absence of the positive element, the absence of suffering.
You can also look upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness.
calm / disturbing / episode / Life / Nothingness
Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs forever to the past.
The negativity of well-being and happiness, in antithesis to the positivity of pain.
antithesis / Happiness / negativity / pain / positivity
Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip. It ceases to persecute only him it has delivered over to boredom.
We sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.
Life is known to be a process of combustion; intellect is the light produced by this process.
combustion / intellect / Life / light / process
There is no happiness on earth to compare with that which a beautiful and fruitful mind finds in a propitious hour within itself.