Why was he such a sad man? Why did he have no hope?

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Intelligence.

>>2014915
hemingway pls

>>2014902

His father was a wealthy merchant who was grooming Arthur to take over his house after he died. He set him up with a paper-pushing job so he could learn the ropes and then committed suicide a few months later. Schopenhauer felt obligated at that point to fulfill his station, and so worked for two years (17-19) in a miserable job that devastated his spirit. He discovered a truth that most of us are familiar with - that 90% of life consists of drudgery and the damming of natural energies and inclinations. When his mother wrote him and told him that he could consider his debt to his father fulfilled, he wept and left his office at once. But he was a stubborn genius, with an immovable mind, and so he never truly forgot what he had come to learn.

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>>2015081
Hello darkness my old friend.

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>>2015081
Well that makes me sad

>>2014902
>"He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial love-affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was exceedingly quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. ... It is hard to find in his life evidences of any virtue except kindness to animals ... In all other respects he was completely selfish. It is difficult to believe that a man who was profoundly convinced of the virtue of asceticism and resignation would never have made any attempt to embody his convictions in his practice."

>>2015520
Literal ad hominen.

Where do I start with schopenhauer? How difficult of a read is he?

>>2015604
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF5luzpfp_g
He's one of the easiest reads because one, he is, along with Nietzsche, the only German philosopher that can write, and two, because he actually wants to be understood, so he always writes in the most concise and clear possible way. I actually started by listening audio bits, but I promise you you can go straight to his magnum opus (the world as will and representation) and you'll do fine. Protip: start from the second part of the book (on the will) if you don't like epistemology. The first part is basically an updated review of Kant's critique of pure reason.

He got friendzoned really hard this one time.

>>2015709
Thanks anon. :D

>>2015604
Read some of his essays. The idea behind OP's pic related is from "On the Vanity of Existence." the rest of his essays from "studies in pessimism" are pretty good too.

>>2015604
Schopenhauer is fairly easy to read because he presents his argumentation like a scientist would leaving little room for interpretation. He doesn't want to engage in circlejerks but his aim is to actually inform the reader.

>>2015709

Thanks for this post.