On the Vanity and Sufferings of Life

'On the Vanity and Sufferings of Life' is a work by the outstanding German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (German: Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788–1860). Man is in the grip of boundless desires—nothing can satisfy his passions or his need for possession, as each fulfilled impulse gives rise to a new one. Other works by Schopenhauer include 'On the Will in Nature', 'On the Freedom of the Will', 'On the Basis of Morality', 'The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics', 'On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason' and 'The World as Will and Representation'. Arthur Schopenhauer was called a 'pessimistic philosopher': he believed the existing world to be 'the worst possible,' in contrast to the German thinker Gottfried Leibniz.