Download or read book The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims written by Arthur Schopenhauer and published by Great Books in Philosophy. This book was released on 1995 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) championed individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation above the irrational impulses that animated most of society. In The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims, two essays from his last work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), he discusses how to order our lives to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success; then he offers guidelines for living life to its fullest. But for Schopenhauer a life well lived should always reach beyond itself to a higher plane.