The World as Will and Idea, passage 873

This that withholds itself from investigation, however, is the thing-in-itself, is that which is essentially not idea, not object of knowledge, but has only become knowable by entering that form. The form is originally foreign to it, and the thing-in-itself can never become entirely one with it, can never be referred to mere form, and, since this form is the principle of sufficient reason, can never be completely explained.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 803

We must now distinctly separate in thought the inmost essence of this manifestation which is known to us directly, and then transfer it to all the weaker, less distinct manifestations of the same nature, and thus we shall accomplish the desired extension of the concept of will. From another point of view I should be equally misunderstood by any one who should think that it is all the same in the end whether we denote this inner nature of all phenomena by the word _will_ or by any other.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2477

The highest degree of this justice of disposition, which is, however, always united with goodness proper, whose character is no longer merely negative, extends so far that a man doubts his right to inherited property, wishes to support his body only by his own powers, mental and physical, feels every service of others and every luxury a reproach, and finally embraces voluntary poverty.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1810

If the whole world as idea is only the visibility of will, the work of art is to render this visibility more distinct. It is the _camera obscura_ which shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey them and comprehend them better. It is the play within the play, the stage upon the stage in “Hamlet.”

The World as Will and Idea, passage 424

There is absolutely nothing in common among them except the negative quality that they are not abstract rational knowledge. But this diversity becomes more striking when the apprehension of space relations presented _a priori_ in perception, and also the knowledge of the pure understanding is brought under this concept, and when we say of all knowledge and all truth, of which we are first conscious only intuitively, and have not yet formulated in abstract concepts, we _feel_ it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1483

The effect of landscape-painting proper is indeed, as a whole, of this kind; but because the Ideas expressed are more distinct and significant, as higher grades of the objectivity of will, the objective side of æsthetic pleasure already comes more to the front and assumes as much importance as the subjective side.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2440

He has a dim foreboding that, however much time and space may separate him from other individuals and the innumerable miseries which they suffer, and even suffer through him, and may represent them as quite foreign to him, yet in themselves, and apart from the idea and its forms, it is the one will to live appearing in them all, which here failing to recognise itself, turns its weapons against itself, and, by seeking increased happiness in one of its phenomena, imposes the greatest suffering upon another.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 636

It is peculiar to _philosophy_ that it presupposes nothing as known, but treats everything as equally external and a problem; not merely the relations of phenomena, but also the phenomena themselves, and even the principle of sufficient reason to which the other sciences are content to refer everything.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2198

With that assertion beyond our own body and extending to the production of a new body, suffering and death, as belonging to the phenomenon of life, have also been asserted anew, and the possibility of salvation, introduced by the completest capability of knowledge, has for this time been shown to be fruitless. Here lies the profound reason of the shame connected with the process of generation.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2729

This quality has been attributed (by Kant) merely to the _nihil privativum_, which is indicated by - as opposed to +, which -, from an opposite point of view, might become +, and in opposition to this _nihil privativum_ the _nihil negativum_ has been set up, which would in every reference be nothing, and as an example of this the logical contradiction which does away with itself has been given.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1517

In the first case the movement is made with _grace_, in the second case without it. Thus as beauty is the adequate representation of will generally, through its merely spatial manifestation; _grace_ is the adequate representation of will through its temporal manifestation, that is to say, the perfectly accurate and fitting expression of each act of will, through the movement and position which objectify it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2640

If we consider how in both cases the transition from the pleasure to the horror of life was the occasion of it, this throws some light upon the remarkable fact that it is among the French, the most cheerful, gay, sensuous, and frivolous nation in Europe, that by far the strictest of all monastic orders, the Trappists, arose, was re-established by Rancé after its fall, and has maintained itself to the present day in all its purity and strictness, in spite of revolutions, Church reformations, and encroachments of infidelity.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 753

We can turn the expression of this truth in different ways and say: My body and my will are one;—or, What as an idea of perception I call my body, I call my will, so far as I am conscious of it in an entirely different way which cannot be compared to any other;—or, My body is the _objectivity_ of my will;—or, My body considered apart from the fact that it is my idea is still my will, and so forth.(27)

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2553

Here it is not, as in the case of others, merely the manifestation which ends with death; but the inner nature itself is abolished, which here existed only in the manifestation, and that in a very weak degree;(84) this last slight bond is now broken. For him who thus ends, the world has ended also.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 49

Thus some design or intention, not the desire of insight, is the guiding star of these disturbers of the peace, and truth is certainly the last thing that is thought of in the matter.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1012

The organism of an animal or of a human being would therefore be, if considered philosophically, not the exhibition of a special Idea, that is, not itself immediate objectivity of the will at a definite higher grade, but in it would appear only those Ideas which objectify the will in electricity, in chemism, and in mechanism.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2691

But far from suppressing this here, I would call it to mind. In truth, real freedom, _i.e._, independence of the principle of sufficient reason, belongs to the will only as a thing-in-itself, not to its manifestation, whose essential form is everywhere the principle of sufficient reason, the element or sphere of necessity.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1208

Thus originally and according to its nature, knowledge is completely subject to the will, and, like the immediate object, which, by means of the application of the law of causality, is its starting-point, all knowledge which proceeds in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason remains in a closer or more distant relation to the will. For the individual finds his body as an object among objects, to all of which it is related and connected according to the principle of sufficient reason.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 488

The incongruity then between the concept and reality soon shows itself here, and it becomes evident that the former never condescends to the particular case, and that with its generality and rigid definiteness it can never accurately apply to the fine distinctions of difference and innumerable modifications of the actual. Therefore, the pedant, with his general maxims, almost always misses the mark in life, shows himself to be foolish, awkward, useless.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1061

We should see the will express itself here in the lowest grade as blind striving, an obscure, inarticulate impulse, far from susceptible of being directly known. It is the simplest and the weakest mode of its objectification. But it appears as this blind and unconscious striving in the whole of unorganised nature, in all those original forces of which it is the work of physics and chemistry to discover and to study the laws, and each of which manifests itself to us in millions of phenomena which are exactly similar and regular, and show no trace of individual character, but are mere multiplicity through space and time, _i.e._, through the _principium individuationis_, as a picture is multiplied through the facets of a glass.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2675

Now, if we consider that conscience, religion, and all influencing ideas teach him to look upon murder as the greatest of crimes, and that, in spite of this, he yet commits it, in the hour of his own death, and when he is altogether uninfluenced by any egotistical motive, such a deed can only be explained in the following manner: in this case, the will of the individual, the father, recognises itself immediately in the children, though involved in the delusion of mistaking the appearance for the true nature; and as he is at the same time deeply impressed with the knowledge of the misery of all life, he now thinks to put an end to the inner nature itself, along with the appearance, and thus seeks to deliver from existence and its misery both himself and his children, in whom he discerns himself as living again.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 71

For when I had the strength originally to grasp the fundamental thought of my system, to follow it at once into its four branches, to return from them to the unity of their origin, and then to explain the whole distinctly, I could not yet be in a position to work out all the branches of the system with the fulness, thoroughness, and elaborateness which is only reached by the meditation of many years—meditation which is required to test and illustrate the system by innumerable facts, to support it by the most different kinds of proof, to throw light on it from all sides, and then to place the different points of view boldly in contrast, to separate thoroughly the multifarious materials, and present them in a well-arranged whole.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2679

Therefore the aims of Nature are to be promoted in every way as soon as the will to live, which is its inner being, has determined itself.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2676

It would be an error precisely analogous to this to suppose that one may reach the same end as is attained through voluntary chastity by frustrating the aim of nature in fecundation; or indeed if, in consideration of the unendurable suffering of life, parents were to use means for the destruction of their new-born children, instead of doing everything possible to ensure life to that which is struggling into it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2429

For all suffering is simply unfulfilled and crossed volition; and even the pain of the body when it is injured or destroyed is as such only possible through the fact that the body is nothing but the will itself become object.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2590

Thus Christianity is made up of two very different constituent parts, and I should like to call the purely ethical part especially and indeed exclusively Christian, and distinguish it from the Jewish dogmatism with which it is combined.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 366

The representation of these spheres by means of figures in space, is an exceedingly happy idea. It first occurred to Gottfried Plouquet, who used squares for the purpose. Lambert, although later than him, used only lines, which he placed under each other. Euler carried out the idea completely with circles. Upon what this complete analogy between the relations of concepts, and those of figures in space, ultimately rests, I am unable to say.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 653

The influence of these upon our whole existence is so penetrating and significant that, on account of them, we are related to the lower animals very much as those animals that see are related to those that have no eyes (certain larvae, worms, and zoophytes). Animals without eyes know only by touch what is immediately present to them in space, what comes into contact with them; those which see, on the contrary, know a wide circle of near and distant objects.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 593

The exercise of acuteness which this method is unceasingly extolled as affording consists merely in this, that the pupil practises drawing conclusions, _i.e._, he practises applying the principle of contradiction, but specially he exerts his memory to retain all those data whose agreement is to be tested. Moreover, it is worth noticing that this method of proof was applied only to geometry and not to arithmetic.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2637

Hence it has often happened that men who have led a very restless life in the full strain of the passions, kings, heroes, and adventurers, suddenly change, betake themselves to resignation and penance, become hermits or monks.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2580

We find the Apostles enjoining the love of our neighbour as ourselves, benevolence, the requital of hatred with love and well-doing, patience, meekness, the endurance of all possible injuries without resistance, abstemiousness in nourishment to keep down lust, resistance to sensual desire, if possible, altogether. We already see here the first degrees of asceticism, or denial of the will proper.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1177

They have also _no coming into being nor passing away_, for they are truly being, never becoming nor vanishing, like their fleeting shadows.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2204

The sexual impulse also proves itself the decided and strongest assertion of life by the fact that to man in a state of nature, as to the brutes, it is the final end, the highest goal of life. Self-maintenance is his first effort, and as soon as he has made provision for that, he only strives after the propagation of the species: as a merely natural being he can attempt no more.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 642

But that knowledge is empirical, is in the concrete; the task of philosophy is to reproduce this in the abstract to raise to permanent rational knowledge the successive changing perceptions, and in general, all that is contained under the wide concept of feeling and merely negatively defined as not abstract, distinct, rational knowledge. It must therefore consist of a statement in the abstract, of the nature of the whole world, of the whole, and of all the parts.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1499

This combination assumes greater complexity in higher forms, and the human body is an exceedingly complex system of different parts, each of which has a peculiar life of its own, _vita propria_, subordinate to the whole.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1431

It is needless to say that by manufactured article no work of plastic art is meant. The schoolmen understand, in fact, by _forma substantialis_ that which I call the grade of the objectification of will in a thing. We shall return immediately, when we treat of architecture, to the Idea of the material. Our view, then, cannot be reconciled with that of Plato if he is of opinion that a table or a chair express the Idea of a table or a chair (De Rep., x., pp. 284, 285, et Parmen., p. 79, ed.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2313

The state is thus instituted under the correct presupposition that pure morality, _i.e._, right action from moral grounds, is not to be expected; if this were not the case, it would itself be superfluous. Thus the state, which aims at well-being, is by no means directed against egoism, but only against the disadvantageous consequences which arise from the multiplicity of egoistic individuals, and reciprocally affect them all and disturb their well-being.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1213

All relation has itself only a relative existence; for example, all being in time is also non-being; for time is only that by means of which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing; therefore every phenomenon which is in time again is not, for what separates its beginning from its end is only time, which is essentially a fleeting, inconstant, and relative thing, here called duration.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1089

At bottom this results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will. Hence arise eager pursuit, anxiety, and suffering.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2762

Grimstone of the Herbarium, Highgate, London, is a pea in full fruit, which has sprung from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and the officials of the British Museum took out of a vase which had been found in an Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have lain 2844 years.”—_Times_, 16th August 1844.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 150

But the co-existence of many things constitutes, in fact, the essence of reality, for through it permanence first becomes possible; for permanence is only knowable in the change of something which is present along with what is permanent, while on the other hand it is only because something permanent is present along with what changes, that the latter gains the special character of change, _i.e._, the mutation of quality and form in the permanence of substance, that is to say, in matter.(7) If the world were in space alone, it would be rigid and immovable, without succession, without change, without action; but we know that with action, the idea of matter first appears.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2784

69 “Critique of Pure Reason,” first edition, pp. 532-558; fifth edition, pp. 560-586; and “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, pp. 169-179; Rosenkranz’s edition, pp. 224-231.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 787

In general, then, as we have shown above, no etiological explanation can ever give us more than the necessarily determined position in time and space of a particular manifestation, its necessary appearance there, according to a fixed law; but the inner nature of everything that appears in this way remains wholly inexplicable, and is presupposed by every etiological explanation, and merely indicated by the names, force, or law of nature, or, if we are speaking of action, character or will.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2573

The history of the world, will, and indeed must, keep silence about the men whose conduct is the best and only adequate illustration of this important point of our investigation, for the material of the history of the world is quite different, and indeed opposed to this.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2291

But the _suffering of wrong_ appears as an event in outward experience, and in it is manifested, as we have said, more distinctly than anywhere else, the phenomenon of the conflict of the will to live with itself, arising from the multiplicity of individuals and from egoism, both of which are conditioned through the _principium individuationis_, which is the form of the world as idea for the knowledge of the individual. We also saw above that a very large part of the suffering essential to human life has its perennial source in that conflict of individuals.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 1447

Plato is therefore perfectly right in his enumeration, for after the Idea and the phenomenon, which include all other things in the world, he gives matter only, as a third thing which is different from both (Timaus, p. 345). The individual, as a phenomenon of the Idea, is always matter. Every quality of matter is also the phenomenon of an Idea, and as such it may always be an object of æsthetic contemplation, _i.e._, the Idea expressed in it may always be recognised.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2124

But now that there is room, this prepared material at once comes forward and occupies the throne of the reigning care of the day (πρυτανευουσα). And if it is very much lighter in its matter than the material of the care which has vanished, it knows how to blow itself out so as apparently to equal it in size, and thus, as the chief care of the day, completely fills the throne.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 2416

Thus, having started entirely from the passive element in the good, the inquiry could only proceed later to the active element, and investigate the conduct of the man who is called good, no longer with reference to others, but to himself; specially setting itself the task of explaining both the purely objective respect which such conduct produces in others, and the peculiar contentment with himself which it clearly produces in the man himself, since he purchases it with sacrifices of another kind; and also, on the other hand, the inner pain which accompanies the bad disposition, whatever outward advantages it brings to him who entertains it.

The World as Will and Idea, passage 915

It ought further to be mentioned that Euler saw that the inner nature of gravitation must ultimately be referred to an “inclination and desire” (thus will) peculiar to material bodies (in the 68th letter to the Princess).

The World as Will and Idea, passage 866

And conversely, that in the phenomenon which is not conditioned through time, space and causality, and which cannot be referred to them, nor explained in accordance with them, is precisely that in which the thing manifested, the thing-in-itself, directly reveals itself.