As a child, I had a thick book called Outline of Great Books. It contained short summaries of 250 major works and offered generations of middle-class children a convenient route into the wisdom of the world. Most of us, naturally, rejected the opportunity. The problem was relevance. Education often presents great books as objects of respect rather than as instruments for living. Why should somebody struggling with work, loneliness, ambition, anxiety or other people’s opinions care what a philosopher wrote centuries ago? The answer is that the best thinkers are not remote from daily life. They help us identify the forces already shaping us: desire, fear, conformity, resentment, vanity and the need for meaning. I want to consider five of my favourite thinkers—Arthur Schopenhauer, William Shakespeare, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill—not as a history of philosophy, but as five sources of practical advice. None of them offers a complete solution to life. Indeed, they disagree about many of its most important questions. But each gives us a way of seeing our own conduct more clearly.
Schopenhauer is probably the thinker closest to my own attitude towards life. He is famous for his deep pessimism, but he was also a remarkably practical observer of human psychology. In some respects, he seems even more relevant in the age of social media, when people are constantly encouraged to want more, compare themselves with others and display their lives to an invisible audience. Schopenhauer believed that life is marked by suffering and unsatisfied desire. We want something, struggle to obtain it, enjoy it briefly, and then begin wanting something else. Even when we succeed, the satisfaction often fades into boredom. His later essays, collected under the title The Wisdom of Life, contain practical advice about how to live with greater independence and fewer unnecessary frustrations. One of his most famous remarks is:
“A man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants.”
The point is that we may be free to act upon our desires, but we do not simply choose what we desire in the first place. Our temperament, upbringing, body, experiences and unconscious impulses all contribute to the things we find attractive or repellent. Schopenhauer described the deeper force behind these impulses as the Will. This does not mean that we should obey every desire. It means that we should recognise the limits of our control. We may not choose the impulses that arise in us, but we can decide which ones to encourage, which environments to enter and which ambitions to abandon. If you hate networking but love solitary work, there may be little value in spending your life trying to become the sort of person who enjoys constant social performance. It may be wiser to arrange your work around your actual temperament. You can still develop social skills, of course, but you do not need to pretend that your nature is entirely different from what it is. This understanding can also produce empathy. When other people frustrate us, we should remember that they too are acting from impulses, habits and pressures they did not entirely choose. That does not excuse every form of bad behaviour, but it may make forgiveness easier. We can judge an action without allowing anger at the person to occupy our whole mind.
Schopenhauer’s view of happiness is deliberately modest. He thought that we notice pain far more sharply than we notice the absence of pain. If we have ten healthy toes and stub one of them, our attention immediately concentrates on the injured toe. The nine healthy ones become almost invisible. For Schopenhauer, contentment often consists less in acquiring extraordinary pleasures than in removing persistent sources of suffering. We should not necessarily expect life to provide a constant stream of excitement. A calm and undisturbed existence may be a greater achievement. This is difficult advice to accept because peace of mind rarely advertises itself. Excitement is visible. Status is visible. New possessions are visible. A quiet life often looks unimpressive from the outside. Yet many of the most valuable improvements in life are subtractive:
If there is one piece of advice I would give a young person, it is to choose the option that preserves peace of mind. The trouble is that peace of mind rarely feels as exciting as ambition, status or romance, so it is often rejected until later.
Schopenhauer also warned against allowing society to dictate our desires. We may spend years trying to become what other people appear to admire, even though we have no genuine interest in that life ourselves. One frequently quoted formulation is:
“We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
The modern equivalent might be the person who selects a career, relationship, home or lifestyle largely because it will look successful to other people. The danger is not simply that we make the wrong choice. It is that we gradually lose the ability to recognise our own preferences. Schopenhauer believed that a person should become, as far as possible, sufficient unto himself. That does not mean becoming cold, antisocial or indifferent to everyone else. It means learning to enjoy one’s own company and to possess values that do not depend entirely on public approval. Reading, making things, walking, gardening, studying or working on a private project can all provide forms of satisfaction that do not require immediate applause. I make art, but I'm not interested in anyone's judgement of it other than my own. I don't care who sees it, and I don't sell it. It isn't worth more (or less) because of someone else's opinion, or how much it is worth.
Once we stop outsourcing our self-worth, we reclaim time and energy for the things we actually value. Schopenhauer’s practical lesson is therefore not simply “be pessimistic”. It is this: understand your temperament, reduce unnecessary desire, and protect your peace.
I am not an entirely uncritical admirer of Shakespeare. His plots can be absurdly elaborate, crowded with mistaken identities, disguises, improbable reversals, coincidences, and people who could solve the entire problem by having one sensible conversation. Yet Shakespeare’s understanding of human motives is so precise that even his most artificial situations often reveal something true about ordinary life. He is an underrated practical psychologist.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives us the famous line:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This should not be treated as a complete theory of reality. Some things really are harmful, unjust, or tragic. Hamlet’s remark occurs within a dramatic and psychologically unstable situation, not a philosophical textbook. Nevertheless, it contains an important practical insight: our interpretation of an event strongly influences the emotional suffering it produces. A cancelled plan is an event. “Nobody respects me and everything is falling apart” is an interpretation. A difficult conversation is an event. “This proves that the relationship is doomed” is an interpretation. A professional setback is an event. “I am a complete failure” is an interpretation. The event matters, but the story we attach to it often determines how long it continues to trouble us. This resembles one important principle used in cognitive behavioural therapy: our thoughts about a situation can influence our emotional response to it. We cannot always change what has happened, but we can examine the conclusions we draw from it. The next time something goes wrong, it may be useful to ask:
Changing the story does not necessarily change the facts. It can, however, change the size of the facts in our minds.
In All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare writes:
“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none.”
This is a concise rule for social life. It combines general benevolence with practical caution.“Love all” need not mean feeling intimate affection for everybody. It may mean treating people with basic goodwill and refusing to begin with unnecessary hostility. “Trust a few” recognises that deep trust must be earned through time and proven character. “Do wrong to none” establishes a moral limit: whatever other people do, we should try not to become deliberately harmful ourselves. This is a useful balance. We can be kind, open and polite without giving everybody access to our private life, money or emotional vulnerabilities. We can hope that people are decent while still paying attention to what they actually do. Trust should not be granted merely because somebody is charming, fashionable or persuasive. It should be built through evidence.
In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare describes doubt as an enemy:
“Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.”
Self-doubt is not always irrational. Sometimes it protects us from recklessness, and sometimes caution is wisdom. But doubt can also become a form of self-sabotage. It can keep us from applying for the job, beginning the project, making the journey, speaking honestly or showing somebody the work we have made. The danger is that fear often disguises itself as analysis. We tell ourselves that we are still thinking about the decision when, in reality, we are avoiding it.A useful response is not to wait for fear to disappear. It is to reduce the size of the first action. Instead of asking whether we are capable of completing the entire project, we can ask whether we are capable of working on it for half an hour. Instead of deciding whether a new direction will transform our whole life, we can make one limited experiment. Courage is not the absence of doubt. It is the refusal to let doubt make every decision.
Kierkegaard is often called the father of Christian existentialism. His writing is concerned with anxiety, faith, individuality and the difficulty of becoming a self. He is also useful in ordinary life because he understood the temptation to remain permanently undecided. Modern life offers endless opportunities to compare, postpone and consume. We can browse different careers, relationships, opinions and lifestyles without committing ourselves to any of them. Kierkegaard’s famous statement is:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
This sounds complicated, but the practical meaning is clear. We understand the significance of many choices only after we have made them. We cannot demand complete certainty before acting because certainty often arrives, if it arrives at all, through the experience of action. This does not mean that we should make reckless decisions. It means that no amount of planning can remove every element of risk. At some point we must choose a direction and accept that we will understand the choice more fully later. Clarity often follows action rather than preceding it.
Kierkegaard described one way of living as the aesthetic life. This is not simply a life devoted to art. It is a life organised around immediate pleasure, novelty, entertainment and the avoidance of commitment. The aesthetic person wants to keep every possibility open. A commitment is attractive only while it remains exciting. Once it becomes demanding or repetitive, the person moves on to something else. This can happen through endless scrolling, constant travel, serial relationships, compulsive shopping or the perpetual search for a more interesting career. The problem is not pleasure itself. The problem is the belief that a meaningful life can be created by avoiding every limitation. Every serious commitment closes some doors. A vocation, friendship, marriage, craft, or moral responsibility requires us to give up certain alternatives. That loss can feel frightening, but it is also what gives a life shape. A person who refuses to choose may imagine that they are preserving freedom. In reality, indecision can become a decision to let circumstances choose on their behalf.
Kierkegaard also wrote:
“If I were to wish for anything, I would wish for the passionate capacity to see what is.”
The phrase suggests a form of intense attention. We often fail to see our own lives because we are comparing them with imagined alternatives. We are physically present in one place while mentally browsing hundreds of other possibilities. To see what is means to attend to the actual situation rather than to the fantasy of a different one. It means noticing the people around us, the work in front of us, the responsibilities we have accepted and the pleasures that are already available. This is not passive resignation. It is an attempt to replace vague dissatisfaction with accurate perception. Before deciding that our life must be completely changed, we should first ask whether we have properly seen the life we already have.
Kierkegaard’s warning about “the crowd” remains relevant to modern public life. He wrote:
“The crowd is untruth.”
He did not mean that every majority opinion is automatically false. His concern was that a person can surrender responsibility by hiding inside a group. When people say “everybody thinks this” or “that is simply what people like us believe”, they may be avoiding the difficult task of examining the belief for themselves. A crowd can offer belonging, but it can also make cruelty and conformity easier. An individual may behave responsibly when alone, yet participate in foolishness once responsibility is spread across a group. The practical lesson is not to reject society. It is to remain personally accountable within society. We should be able to say:
“This is what I believe, and these are the reasons for it.”
That applies to political opinions, professional decisions, religious beliefs and social fashions. A belief is more meaningful when it has been examined and chosen rather than merely inherited from a group. Free expression is important in this context because genuine agreement cannot be produced by fear alone. When people are punished simply for expressing an unpopular opinion, they may learn to conceal their thoughts rather than reconsider them. The result is outward conformity rather than genuine conviction.A healthy society must allow people to encounter arguments that challenge, offend or disturb them. This does not require us to approve of every argument, but it does require us to distinguish between being challenged and being harmed.
Kierkegaard’s phrase “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” describes the unsettling experience of real choice. If we are free to choose our own path, then we cannot always blame somebody else for the consequences. That freedom is exciting, but it is also frightening. We may prefer to let an institution, a family, a political tribe or an online crowd tell us what to think. Doing so reduces anxiety, but it also reduces responsibility. The mature response is not to eliminate anxiety completely. It is to recognise that some anxiety is the price of having choices that matter.
Nietzsche is one of the most frequently quoted and most frequently simplified thinkers. He is often reduced to slogans about power, strength or rebellion. His actual work is more complicated. He was concerned with the creation of values, the dangers of conformity and the possibility of transforming suffering into a more powerful form of life. One of his most important ideas is expressed through the Latin phrase amor fati, meaning “love of fate”.Nietzsche wrote:
“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”
This does not require us to pretend that every painful event was pleasant or that every injustice was acceptable. Nor does it mean that we should stop trying to improve the world. It means that endless resentment cannot undo the past. We may regret what happened, oppose what happened or grieve what happened, but eventually we must decide what to make of it. A career failure, a broken relationship or a humiliating mistake can remain a permanent accusation against life. Alternatively, it can become material from which we construct greater knowledge, discipline and independence. The useful question is not always “Why did this happen to me?” It may be:
“What can I make of the fact that this has happened?”
That question does not excuse other people or erase responsibility. It simply refuses to let the past have the final word.
Nietzsche is also associated with the statement:
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
The quotation is connected with the experience of suffering and the importance of purpose. Its meaning is not merely that goals make us more productive. It is that suffering becomes more bearable when it belongs to a purpose we genuinely recognise as our own. A difficult task feels different when we understand why it matters. Studying, building a business, caring for a family, mastering a craft or creating a work of art may involve exhaustion and frustration. But difficulty is easier to endure when it is connected to a larger project. This is why it is useful to identify one’s “why” before becoming overwhelmed by the “how”. When the work becomes repetitive, we need to remember what the effort serves. The “why” must be genuine. A slogan borrowed from somebody else will not sustain us for long. The purpose has to connect with our own values rather than with what we imagine will impress other people.
Nietzsche famously wrote:
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”
He distrusted the idea that thinking belongs only to the sedentary academic, isolated at a desk or behind a lectern. For him, thought was connected with the body, the senses and the movement of life. Walking changes the rhythm of attention. It can interrupt circular thinking, remove us from the pressure of a screen and allow a difficult question to develop without being forced. When I am stuck with a problem, a short walk can be more useful than staring at the problem for another hour. The solution may not arrive immediately, but the mind often becomes less congested. The lesson is simple: when thinking becomes unproductive, change the physical conditions of thought. Leave the room. Walk outside. Look at something other than the problem. Let the body participate in the work of the mind.
If Schopenhauer is closest to me in his attitude towards life, John Stuart Mill is probably closest to me in political theory. Mill defended individual liberty, freedom of expression and the value of intellectual independence. He believed that society could become oppressive not only through laws but also through custom, public opinion and the pressure to behave like everybody else.
In Utilitarianism, Mill argues that pleasures differ not only in quantity but also in quality. He writes:
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
Mill is not saying that bodily pleasures are worthless. Food, sleep, comfort and recreation are all important. His point is that intellectual, imaginative and moral activities can be more valuable than passive satisfactions, even when they require effort and expose us to disappointment. A person who has experienced both kinds of pleasure may prefer the more demanding one because it develops more of his or her capacities. This has an obvious application to modern life. A person can spend an evening consuming an endless stream of short videos and experience frequent moments of stimulation without feeling deeply satisfied. Alternatively, that person can read a difficult book, learn an instrument, make something, study a subject or have a serious conversation. The second activity may require more effort, but it can leave behind something more durable than momentary distraction. This is not an argument for abolishing entertainment. It is an argument for noticing the difference between rest and passive consumption. Rest renews us. Consumption can sometimes leave us more restless than before.
In On Liberty, Mill writes:
“As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments in living.”
This is one of Mill’s most valuable ideas. Society needs people who are willing to test different ways of living instead of following inherited assumptions. Mill was opposed to what he called the “despotism of custom”: the pressure to accept whatever society regards as normal. A person may choose a career, relationship, home or routine simply because it is expected, not because it suits his or her character. Individuality is not merely self-indulgence. It is a form of social progress. We learn what is possible because some people are willing to live differently. This does not mean that every experiment will succeed. A new routine may fail. An unconventional career may prove impractical. A bold decision may produce consequences that were not anticipated. But a life governed entirely by fear of disapproval is unlikely to become an examined life. We can treat our habits as a small laboratory. Try a different morning routine for a month. Change the way you organise your work. Spend less time online. Take up an unfamiliar activity. Alter the balance between solitude and company. Notice what actually improves your life rather than what merely sounds impressive.
Mill also writes:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
This is a powerful rule for intellectual life. If we understand only our own opinions, our convictions may be sincere but shallow. We may know what we believe without knowing why an intelligent person might reject it. The answer is not to treat every opinion as equally valid. It is to seek out the strongest argument against our own position rather than the weakest one. When we hold a strong political, professional or social opinion, we should read people who disagree with us and try to understand their reasoning. This may strengthen our own view. It may also reveal that part of our certainty was based on habit, tribal loyalty or incomplete information. Changing one’s mind is not always a defeat. Sometimes it is evidence that one has been thinking. Mill’s wider point is that freedom of speech is not valuable merely because it allows people to express themselves. It is valuable because disagreement helps individuals test their beliefs. A society in which everybody repeats the same opinion may appear peaceful, but it is intellectually weak.
These five thinkers do not tell us to live in the same way. Schopenhauer advises us to reduce unnecessary desire and protect our peace. Shakespeare reminds us to examine the interpretations through which we experience events. Kierkegaard demands personal commitment and responsibility. Nietzsche asks us to transform suffering into strength. Mill defends the freedom to think, speak and experiment with different ways of living. Their value is not that they provide ready-made answers. It is that they make our ordinary assumptions less comfortable. They ask whether the desire we are obeying is really our own. They ask whether our fear is telling the truth. They ask whether our opinions belong to us or merely to the crowd. They ask whether the life we are living has been chosen or simply inherited. That is why old thinkers remain relevant. They do not remove the difficulty of living. They help us see what the difficulty consists of.