Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer built his entire philosophy on the claim that a blind, striving will underlies the world, and that art and contemplation offer the only real escape from it. His masterwork Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818/19) was ignored for decades; he added a second volume of supplementary essays in 1844, and it is there — in the chapter “Vom Genie” — that the marksman comparison appears. His late aphoristic style made him one of the most quotable philosophers who ever wrote, which is precisely why so many lines he never wrote now carry his name.