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He who is capable of thinking a little more deeply will soon perceive that human desires cannot begin to be sinful simply at that point at which, in their chance encounters with one another, they occasion harm and evil; but that, if this is what they bring about, they must be originally and in their essence sinful and reprehensible, and the entire will to live itself reprehensible. All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified, and thus merely a commentary on the affirmation of the will to live. That our existence itself implies guilt is proved by the fact of death.
p.63
Schopenhauer, Arthur 1788-1860, Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851, Hayn, Berlin.
trns. R.J. Hollingdale, Essays and Aphorisms, 2004, Penguin, London.
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