Schopenhauer, always brilliant and sharp, presents in this essay an overview of the ages of human life, with their pros and cons, and offers original assessments of each of them. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a disciple of Kant and a heterodox figure in the philosophical panorama of the nineteenth century, was not highly valued during his life by the academic world, but instead exerted a very notable influence on a large number of writers, musicians and artists throughout Europe, which attests to the fecundity of his ideas. Schopenhauer, in his irrationalist and pessimistic philosophy, was one of the first European intellectuals to adopt ideas from Eastern philosophies; It was, in this as in other respects, a precursor. One of his most popular works was Parerga und Paralipomena (Supplements and Omissions, 1851), a miscellaneous work containing essays on a wide variety of subjects. The one we present in this volume offers a moral reflection on the successive stages of human existence: childhood, youth, maturity and old age, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of each. Schopenhauer's keen observations make this short essay an enjoyable and enriching read.