Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health.
parerga And Paralipomenaby arthur Schopenhauer
In general, nine – tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone.
Common people are merely intent on spending time – whoever has some talent, on making use of it.
Whoever attaches great importance to the opinions of people pays them too much honour.
honour / importance / opinions
The cheapest kind of pride, on the other hand, is national pride. For it betrays in those affected by it the lack of individual qualities of which they could be proud, since they would otherwise not grasp at something that they share with so many millions. Rather those who possess significant personal qualities will recognize most clearly the faults of their own nation, since they constantly have them in front of them.
It is really most absurd to wish to turn this scene of misery into a pleasure spot and set ourselves the goal of achieving pleasures and joys instead of freedom from pain, as so many do. Those who, with too gloomy a gaze, regard this world as a kind of hell and, accordingly, are only concerned with procuring a fireproof room in it, are much less mistaken. The fool runs after the pleasures of life and sees himself cheated; the sage avoids evils.
Every society requires mutual accommodation and mutually agreeable temper; hence the larger it is, the duller.
People’s envy shows how unhappy they feel; their constant attention to the doings of others how bored they are.
Astrology provides a brilliant proof of the miserable subjectivity of human beings, as a result of which they relate everything to themselves and go from every thought in a straight line immediately back to themselves. It relates the course of the great celestial bodies to the pathetic I, as it also connects the comets in the sky with earthly quarrels and shabby tricks.
The origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God?