Q0316

Arthur Schopenhauer

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

All life is suffering.
Thinker Arthur Schopenhauer
School Philosophy of Will
Source The World as Will and Representation IV
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The World as Will and Representation IV, within the tradition of Philosophy of Will. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Arthur Schopenhauer's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Arthur Schopenhauer. (n.d.). All life is suffering. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0316

MLA: Arthur Schopenhauer. “All life is suffering..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0316.

Chicago: Arthur Schopenhauer. “All life is suffering..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0316.

Same thinker

More from Arthur Schopenhauer

  1. The world is my representation.
  2. Compassion is the basis of morality.
  3. Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
  4. Solitude is the lot of all outstanding minds.
  5. What a person is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.

All quotations by Arthur Schopenhauer

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme