What a distance there is between our beginning and our end! The one, the madness of desire and the seduction of voluptuousness; the other, the destruction of all our organs and the fetid odour of decaying cadavers. Moreover, the road of well-being between the one and the other goes ever downwards: the blessed, dreaming childhood, happy youth, the tribulations of those in their prime, frail and often pathetic old age, the torment of the last illness, and finally the agony of dying. Therefore does it not seem that Being is a misstep … ? —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER Parerga und Paralipomena: Kleine
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