A couple of readers, following my Schopenhauer link yesterday, discovered the obit anus, abit onus quote. It is absolutely one of the all-time great quotes. It’s in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, which was a pretty much compulsory pre-college reading-list item in my day (wonder what the equivalent is now?) and we had many a chuckle over it in the sixth form common room. As I recall, the injured seamstress was annoying Schopenhauer by gossiping loudly with another woman on the landing outside his room, and after a brief altercation, he threw her down the stairs. Never mess with a philosopher.