World Spirit: This then is the task of all your labour and all your suffering: it is for this that you exist, as all other things exist.
Man: But what do I get from existence? If it is full I have only distress, if empty only boredom. How can you offer me so poor a reward for so much labour and so much suffering?
World Spirit: And yet it proportionate to all your toil and all your suffering, and is so precisely on account of its meagreness.
Man: Indeed! That passes my comprehension.
World Spirit: I know it does. (Aside) Should I tell him that the value of life lies precisely in this, that it teaches him not to want it? For this supreme initiation, life itself must prepare him.
. . . . . . . . .
On Affirmation and Denial of the Will to Live, Arthur Schopenhauer
