Inner Poverty
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life

The author concludes that internal character is the primary factor in happiness, explaining why the wealthy are often as miserable as the poor.

...m inaccessible, and he tries in vain to replace them by the fleeting pleasures of sense in which he indulges, lasting but a brief hour and at tremendous cost. And if he is lucky, his struggles result in his having a really great pile of gold, which he leaves to his heir, either to make it still larger, or to squander it in extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a sense of earnestness and an air of importance, is just as silly as many another which has a fool's cap for its symbol.
What a man has in himself is, then, the chief element in his happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little, most of those who are placed beyond the struggle with penury feel at bottom quite as unhappy as those who are still engaged in it.
Their minds are vacant, their imagination dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to the company of those like them--for similis simili gaudet--where they make common pursuit of pastime and entertainment, consisting for the most part in sensual pleasure, amusement of every kind, and finally, in excess and libertinism. A young man of rich family enters upon life with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance; and why? Si...
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Health Over Everything
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life

A prescription for prioritizing health above all other pursuits, while acknowledging that a melancholy temperament can persist even in a healthy body.

...h alone. With health, everything is a source of pleasure; without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable; even the other personal blessings,--a great mind, a happy temperament--are degraded and dwarfed for want of it. So it is really with good reason that, when two people meet, the first thing they do is to inquire after each other's health, and to express the hope that it is good; for good health is by far the most important element in human happiness. It follows from all this that
The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness, whatever it may be, for gain, advancement, learning or fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures. Everything else should rather be postponed to it. But however much health may contribute to that flow of good spirits which is so essential to our happiness, good spirits do not entirely depend upon health; for a man may be perfectly sound in his physique and still possess a melancholy temperament and be generally given up to sad thoughts.
The ultimate cause of this is undoubtedly to be found in innate, and therefore unalterable, physical constitution, especially in the more or less normal relation of a man's sensitiveness to his muscular and vital energy. Abnormal sensitiveness produces inequality of spirits, a predominating melancholy, with periodical fits of unrestrained liveliness. A genius is one whose nervous power or sensitiveness is largely in excess; as Aristotle[1] has very correctly observed, _Men distinguished in phil...
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Like Attracts Like
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life

The author argues that individuals are only capable of appreciating things that mirror their own nature, leading the dull to prefer dullness and the wise to prefer wisdom.

...ur, or the temper of the moment,--belonging to it, living and dying with it. The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favorably received at first; but remain in obscurity until they win notice from intelligence of a high order, by whose influence they are brought into a position which they then maintain, in virtue of the authority thus given them. If the reason of this should be asked, it will be found that ultimately,
A man can really understand and appreciate those things only which are of like nature with himself. The dull person will like what is dull, and the common person what is common; a man whose ideas are mixed will be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will appeal to him who has no brains at all; but best of all, a man will like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at one with himself.
This is a truth as old as Epicharmus of fabulous memory-- [Greek: Thaumaston ouden esti me tauth outo legein Kal andanein autoisin autous kal dokein Kalos pethukenai kal gar ho kuon kuni Kalloton eimen phainetai koi bous boi Onos dono kalliston [estin], us dut.] The sense of this passage--for it should not be lost--is that we should not be surprised if people are pleased with themselves, and fancy that they are in good case; for to a dog the best thing in the world is a dog; to an o...
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Unemployed Forces
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life

The author explains that human faculties, once freed from the struggle for survival, become a source of boredom unless they are employed in purposeless play or activity.

...at every pleasure presupposes some sort of activity, the application of some sort of power, without which it cannot exist. The doctrine of Aristotle's, that a man's happiness consists in the free exercise of his highest faculties, is also enunciated by Stobaeus in his exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy[2]: happiness, he says, means vigorous and successful activity in all your undertakings; and he explains that by vigor [Greek: aretae] he means mastery in any thing, whatever it be.
Now, the original purpose of those forces with which nature has endowed man is to enable him to struggle against the difficulties which beset him on all sides. But if this struggle comes to an end, his unemployed forces become a burden to him; and he has to set to work and play with them,--to use them, I mean, for no purpose at all, beyond avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom, to which he is at once exposed.
It is the upper classes, people of wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom. Lucretius long ago described their miserable state, and the truth of his description may be still recognized to-day, in the life of every great capital--where the rich man is seldom in his own halls, because it bores him to be there, and still he returns thither, because he is no better off outside;--or else he is away in post-haste to his house in the country, as if it were on fire; and he is no sooner arrived...
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Melancholy's Low Threshold
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life

The author argues that the threshold for suicide is determined by the balance between external suffering and internal temperament, where a melancholy disposition requires far less hardship to reach a breaking point than a cheerful one.

...ay in which the sufferer, when placed under supervision, as he usually is, eagerly waits to seize the first unguarded moment, when, without a shudder, without a struggle or recoil, he may use the now natural and welcome means of effecting his release.[1] Even the healthiest, perhaps even the most cheerful man, may resolve upon death under certain circumstances; when, for instance, his sufferings, or his fears of some inevitable misfortune, reach such a pitch as to outweigh the terrors of death.
The only difference lies in the degree of suffering necessary to bring about the fatal act, a degree which will be high in the case of a cheerful, and low in that of a gloomy man. The greater the melancholy, the lower need the degree be; in the end, it may even sink to zero. But if a man is cheerful, and his spirits are supported by good health, it requires a high degree of suffering to make him lay hands upon himself.
There are countless steps in the scale between the two extremes of suicide, the suicide which springs merely from a morbid intensification of innate gloom, and the suicide of the healthy and cheerful man, who has entirely objective grounds for putting an end to his existence. [Footnote 1: For a detailed description of this condition of mind Cf Esquirol, Des maladies mentales.] Beauty is partly an affair of health. It may be reckoned as a personal advantage; though it does not, properly sp...
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