Wednesday, 4 November 2026

Quotations

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Schopenhauer threw his landlady down the stairs and had to pay her an annuity and that she lived to a great age. He wrote across the letter that informed him of her death: 'Anus obit, onus abit'. He had had decades to think of that joke.

"The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and . . . all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing of the sand and sowing of the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit." C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“They try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars.” Abdul El-Sayed whose election as Senator for Michigan was just announced.


1 comment:

  1. For the sake of a generation that knows little Latin, it is worth mentioning that Schopenhauer presumably intended ănus, old woman, rather than the anatomical ānus.

    In his After Hegel: German Philosophy 1840-1900, Frederick Beiser once refers to Schopenhauer as "the Frankfurt Scrooge", which seems fair enough. But I didn't know that he went as far as physical violence.

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