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And When The Hourglass Has Run Out, The Hourglass Of Temporality, When The Noise Of Secular Life Has Grown Silent And Its Restless Or Ineffectual Activism Has Come To An End, When Everything Around You Is Still, As It Is In Eternity, Then Eternity Asks You And Every Individual In These Millions And Millions About Only One Thing: Whether You Have Lived In Despair Or Not.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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And When The Hourglass

Soren Kierkegaard

...

And When The Hourglass Has Run Out, The Hourglass Of Temporality, When The Noise Of Secular Life Has Grown Silent And Its Restless Or Ineffectual Activism Has Come To An End, When Everything Around You Is Still, As It Is In Eternity, Then Eternity Asks You And Every Individual In These Millions And Millions About Only One Thing: Whether You Have Lived In Despair Or Not.

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To Cheat Oneself Out Of Love Is The Most Terrible Deception; It Is An Eternal Loss For Which There Is No Reparation, Either In Time Or In Eternity.

There Is Something Almost Cruel About The Christian's Being Placed In A World Which In Every Way Wants To Pressure Him To Do The Opposite Of What God Bids Him To Do.

Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards; But It Must Be Lived Forwards.

I Am Convinced That God Is Love, This Thought Has For Me A Primitive Lyrical Validity. When It Is Present To Me, I Am Unspeakably Blissful, When It Is Absent, I Long For It More Vehemently Than Does The Lover For His Object.

It Is Perhaps The Misfortune Of My Life That I Am Interested In Far Too Much But Not Decisively In Any One Thing; All My Interests Are Not Subordinated In One But Stand On An Equal Footing.

The Truth Is A Trap: You Cannot Get It Without It Getting You; You Cannot Get The Truth By Capturing It, Only By Its Capturing You.

Don't Forget To Love Yourself.

If I Am Capable Of Grasping God Objectively, I Do Not Believe, But Precisely Because I Cannot Do This I Must Believe.

God Creates Everything Out Of Nothing. And Everything Which God Is To Use, He First Reduces To Nothing

Nowadays Not Even A Suicide Kills Himself In Desperation. Before Taking The Step He Deliberates So Long And So Carefully That He Literally Chokes With Thought. It Is Even Questionable Whether He Ought To Be Called A Suicide, Since It Is Really Thought Which Takes His Life. He Does Not Die With Deliberation But From Deliberation.

Only When It Is A Duty To Love, Only Then Is Love Eternally And Happily Secured Against Despair.

Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.

The Proud Person Always Wants To Do The Right Thing, The Great Thing. But Because He Wants To Do It In His Own Strength, He Is Fighting Not With Man, But With God.

Whoever Has The World's Treasures Has Them No Matter How He Got Them. In The World Of The Spirit It Is Otherwise.

Had I To Carve An Inscription On My Tombstone I Would Ask For None Other Than "the Individual."

If I Could Prescribe Only One Remedy For All The Ills Of The Modern World, I Would Prescribe Silence.

All Essential Knowledge Relates To Existence, Or Only Such Knowledge As Has An Essential Relationship To Existence Is Essential Knowledge.

Death Is Not Earnest In The Same Way The Eternal Is. To The Earnestness Of Death Belongs Precisely That Remarkable Capacity For Awakening, That Resonance Of A Profound Mockery Which, Detached From The Thought Of The Eternal, Is An Empty And Often Brash Jest, But Together With The Thought Of The Eternal Is Just What It Should Be, Utterly Different From The Insipid Solemness Which Least Of All Captures And Holds A Thought With Tension Like That Of Death.

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

And Then The Spirit Brings Hope, Hope In The Strictest Christian Sense, Hope Which Is Hoping Against Hope. For An Immediate Hope Exists In Every Person; It May Be More Powerfully Alive In One Person Than In Another; But In Death Every Hope Of This Kind Dies And Turns Into Hopelessness. Into This Night Of Hopelessness (it Is Death That We Are Describing) Comes The Life-giving Spirit And Brings Hope, The Hope Of Eternity. It Is Against Hope, For There Was No Longer Any Hope For That Merely Natural Hope; This Hope Is Therefore A Hope Contrary To Hope.

I Have Attacked No One As Not Being A Christian, I Have Condemned No One.

It Is Only All Too Easy To Understand The Requirements Contained In God's Word ('give All Your Goods To The Poor.' 'if Anyone Strikes You On The Right Cheek, Turn The Left.' 'if Anyone Takes Your Coat, Let Him Have Your Cloak Also. Rejoice Always.' 'count It Sheer Joy When You Meet Various Temptations' Etc.). The Most Ignorant, Poor Creature Cannot Honestly Deny Being Able To Understand God's Requirements. But It Is Tough On The Flesh To Will To Understand It And To Then Act Accordingly. It Is Not A Question Of Interpretation, But Action.

Any Truth Is Only True Up To A Certain Point. When One Oversteps The Mark, It Becomes A Non-truth.

When You Open The Door Which You Shut In Order To Pray To God, The First Person You Meet As You Go Out Is Your Neighbour Whom You Shall Love. Wonderful!

Faith Is A Marvel, And Yet No Human Being Is Excluded From It; For That In Which All Human Life Is United Is Passion, And Faith Is A Passion.

If I Were A Physician, And If I Were Allowed To Prescribe Just One Remedy For All The Ills Of The Modern World, I Would Prescribe Silence. For Even If The Word Of God Were Proclaimed In The Modern World, How Could One Hear It With So Much Noise? Therefore, Create Silence.

It Seems Essential, In Relationships And All Tasks, That We Concentrate Only On What Is Most Significant And Important.

Faith Is Holding Onto Uncertainties With Passionate Conviction.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

Personality Is Only Ripe When A Man Has Made The Truth His Own.

Repetition Is The Reality And The Seriousness Of Life.

Most People Live Dejectedly In Worldly Joys Or Sorrows. They Sit On The Sidelines And Do Not Join The Dance.

I Begin With The Principle That All Men Are Bores. Surely No One Will Prove Himself So Great A Bore As To Contradict Me In This.

It Is The Duty Of The Human Understanding To Understand That There Are Things Which It Cannot Understand, And What Those Things Are. Human Understanding Has Vulgarly Occupied Itself With Nothing But Understanding, But If It Would Only Take The Trouble To Understand Itself At The Same Time It Would Simply Have To Posit The Paradox.

If The Ethical - That Is, Social Morality- Is The Highest ... Then No Categories Are Needed Other Than The Greek Philosophical Categories.

There Are Two Ways To Be Fooled. One Is To Believe What Isn't True; The Other Is To Refuse To Believe What Is True.

The Unhappy Person Is Never Present To Themself Because They Always Live In The Past Or The Future.

For He Who Loves God Without Faith Reflects On Himself, While The Person Who Loves God In Faith Reflects On God.

It Is More Blessed To Give Than To Receive, But Then It Is Also More Blessed To Be Able To Do Without Than To Have To Have.

The Absurd . . . The Fact That With God All Things Are Possible. The Absurd Is Not One Of The Factors Which Can Be Discriminated Within The Proper Compass Of The Understanding: It Is Not Identical With The Improbable, The Unexpected, The Unforeseen.

It Requires Courage Not To Surrender Oneself To The Ingenious Or Compassionate Counsels Of Despair That Would Induce A Man To Eliminate Himself From The Ranks Of The Living; But It Does Not Follow From This That Every Huckster Who Is Fattened And Nourished In Self-confidence Has More Courage Than The Man Who Yielded To Despair.

Self Confidence

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

For Without Risk There Is No Faith, And The Greater The Risk, The Greater The Faith.

It Occurs To Me That Artists Go Forward By Going Backward, Something Which I Have Nothing Against Intrinsically When It Is A Reproduced Retreat - As Is The Case With The Better Artists.

The Greatest Danger To Christianity Is, I Contend, Not Heresies, Not Heterodoxies, Not Atheists, Not Profane Secularism - No, But The Kind Of Orthodoxy Which Is Cordial Drivel, Mediocrity Served Up Sweet. There Is Nothing That So Insidiously Displaces The Majestic As Cordiality.

The Idea Of Demonstrating That This Unknown Something [god] Exists, Could Scarcely Suggest Itself To Reason. For If God Does Not Exist It Would Of Course Be Impossible To Prove It, And If He Does Exist It Would Be Folly To Attempt It.

Let Others Mock At You, Oppose You, When You Are Under The Influence Of Any Passion; Do Not Be In The Least Offended With Those Who Mock At Or Oppose You, For They Do You Good; Crucify Your Self-love And Acknowledge The Wrong, The Error Of Your Heart. But Have The Deepest Pity For Those Who Mock At Words And Works Of Faith And Piety, Of Righteousness; For Those Who Oppose The Good Which You Are Doing... God Preserve You - Getting Exasperated At Them.

When You Read God's Word, You Must Constantly Be Saying To Yourself, "it Is Talking To Me, And About Me".

There Are Many People Who Reach Their Conclusions About Life Like Schoolboys: They Cheat Their Master By Copying The Answer Out Of A Book Without Having Worked The Sum Out For Themselves.

The Thinker Without A Paradox Is Like A Lover Without A Feeling: A Paltry Mediocrity.

Irony Is A Disciplinarian Feared Only By Those Who Do Not Know It, But Cherished By Those Who Do

The Deepest Form Of Despair Is To Choose To Be Another Than Himself.

Affliction Is Able To Drown Out Every Earthly Voice. . . But The Voice Of Eternity Within A Person It Cannot Drown.

Most People Are Subjective Toward Themselves And Objective Toward All Others, Frightfully Objective Sometimes--but The Task Is Precisely To Be Objective Toward Oneself And Subjective Toward All Others.

A Poet Is Not An Apostle; He Drives Out Devils Only By The Power Of The Devil.

Critical Thinking

On The Whole, The Longing For Solitude Is A Sign That There Still Is Spirit In A Person And Is A Measure Of What Spirit There Is.

Every Day I Walk Myself Into A State Of Well-being And Walk Away From Every Illness; I Have Walked Myself Into My Best Thoughts.

Your Own Tactic Is To Train Yourself In The Art Of Becoming Enigmatic To Everybody. My Young Friend, Suppose There Was No One Who Troubld Himself To Guess Your Riddle--what Joy, Then, Would You Have In It?

The Resolving Of The Ethical, Is Freedom; The Negative Resolution Also Has This, But The Freedom, Blank And Bare, Is As If Tongue-tied, Hard To Express, And Generally Has Something Hard In Its Nature. Falling In Love, However, Promptly Sets It To Music, Even If This Composition Contains A Very Difficult Passage.

Falling In Love

The Paradox In Christian Truth Is Invariably Due To The Fact That It Is The Truth That Exists For God. The Standard Of Measure And The End Is Superhuman; And There Is Only One Relationship Possible: Faith.

No Grand Inquisitor Has In Readiness Such Terrible Tortures As Has Anxiety And No Spy Knows How To Attack More Artfully The Man He Suspects, Choosing The Instant When He Is Weakest; Nor Knows How To Lay Traps Where He Will Be Caught And Ensnared As Anxiety Knows How, And No Sharp-witted Judge Knows How To Interrogate, To Examine The Accused, As Anxiety Does, Which Never Lets Him Escape.

Now, With God's Help, I Shall Become Myself.

The Question Is Asked In Ignorance, By One Who Does Not Even Know What Can Have Led Him To Ask It.

A Man Prayed, And At First He Thought That Prayer Was Talking. But He Became More And More Quiet Until In The End He Realized Prayer Is Listening.

Certainty... Lurks At The Door Of Faith And Threatens To Devour It.

To Defend Something Is Always To Discredit It. Let A Man Have A Warehouse Full Of Gold, Let Him Be Willing To Give Away A Ducat To Every One Of The Poor - But Let Him Also Be Stupid Enough To Begin This Charitable Undertaking Of His With A Defense In Which He Offers Three Good Reasons In Justification; And It Will Almost Come To The Point Of People Finding It Doubtful Whether Indeed He Is Doing Something Good. But Now For Christianity. Yes, The Person Who Defends That Has Never Believed In It.

What The Philosophers Have To Say About Reality Is Often As Disappointing As A Sign You See In A Shop Window, Which Reads Pressing Done Here. If You Brought Your Clothes In To Be Pressed, You Would Be Fooled: For The Sign Is Only For Sale.

...the Reason For [this Age's] Anxiety And Unrest Is Because In One Direction, 'truth' Increases In Scope And Quantity - Via Science And Technology - While In The Other, Certainty And Confidence Steadily Decline. Our Age Is A Master In Developing Truths While Being Wholly Indifferent To Certitude. It Lacks Confidence In The Good.

Sin Is In Itself Separation From The Good, But Despair Over Sin Is Separation A Second Time.

Irony Is The Cultivation Of The Spirit And Therefore Follows Next After Immediacy; Then Comes The Ethicist, Then The Humourist, Then The Religious Person.

A Fire Broke Out Backstage In A Theatre. The Clown Came Out To Warn The Public; They Thought It Was A Joke And Applauded. He Repeated It; The Acclaim Was Even Greater. I Think That's Just How The World Will Come To An End: To The General Applause Of Wits Who Believe It's A Joke.

Pain Reconciles One To Existence. Infinite Resignation Is That Shirt In The Old Fable. The Thread Is Spun With Tears, Bleached By Tears, The Shirt Sewn In Tears, But Then It Also Gives Better Protection Than Iron. The Secret In Life Is That Everyone Must Sew It For Himself.

Because Of Its Tremendous Solemnity Death Is The Light In Which Great Passions, Both Good And Bad, Become Transparent, No Longer Limited By Outward Appearances.

Boredom Rests Upon The Nothingness That Winds Its Way Through Existence; Its Giddiness, Like That Which Comes From Gazing Down Into An Infinite Abyss, Is Infinite.

It's Better To Get Lost In The Passion Than To Lose The Passion

Love Is The Expression Of The One Who Loves, Not Of The One Who Is Loved. Those Who Think They Can Love Only The People They Prefer Do Not Love At All. Love Discovers Truths About Individuals That Others Cannot See

Do Not Interrupt The Flight Of Your Soul; Do Not Distress What Is Best In You; Do Not Enfeeble Your Spirit With Half Wishes And Half Thoughts. Ask Yourself And Keep On Asking Until You Find The Answer, For One May Have Known Something Many Times, Acknowledged It; One May Have Willed Something Many Times, Attempted It - And Yet, Only The Deep Inner Motion, Only The Heart's Indescribable Emotion, Only That Will Convince You That What You Have Acknowledged Belongs To You, That No Power Can Take It From You - For Only The Truth That Builds Up Is Truth For You.

People Understand Me So Poorly That They Don't Even Understand My Complaint About Them Not Understanding Me.

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

A Man's Personality Is Matured Only When He Appropriates The Truth, Whether It Is Spoken By Balaam's Ass Or A Sniggering Wag Or An Apostle Or An Angel.

It Is The Duty Of The Human Understanding To Understand That There Are Things Which It Cannot Understand.

Once You Are Born In This World You’re Old Enough To Die.

To Grumble About The World And Its Unhappiness Is Always Easier Than To Beat One's Breast And Groan Over Oneself.

One Must Not Think Slightingly Of The Paradoxical…for The Paradox Is The Source Of The Thinker’s Passion, And The Thinker Without A Paradox Is Like A Lover Without Feeling: A Paltry Mediocrity.

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

If Someone Who Wanted To Learn To Dance Were To Say: For Centuries, One Generation After The Other Has Learned The Positions, And It Is High Time That I Take Advantage Of This And Promptly Begin With The Quadrille--people Would Presumably Laugh A Little At Him, But In The World Of Spirit This Is Very Plausible. What, Then, Is Education? I Believed It Is The Course The Individual Goes Through In Order To Catch Up With Himself, And The Person Who Will Not Go Through This Course Is Not Much Helped By Being Born In The Most Enlightened Age.

Out Of Love For Mankind, And Out Of Despair At My Embarrassing Situation, Seeing That I Had Accomplished Nothing And Was Unable To Make Anything Easier Than It Had Already Been Made, And Moved By A Genuine Interest In Those Who Make Everything Easy, I Conceived It As My Task To Create Difficulties Everywhere.

I Have, I Believe, The Courage To Doubt Everything; I Have, I Believe, The Courage To Fight Against Everything; But I Do Not Have The Courage To Acknowledge Anything, The Courage To Possess, To Own Anything.

Geniuses Are Like Thunderstorms: They Go Against The Wind, Terrify People, Clear The Air.

Where Am I? Who Am I? How Did I Come To Be Here? What Is This Thing Called The World?

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

It Is Very Important In Life To Know When Your Cue Comes.

The Crucial Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is Truth For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Am Willing To Live And Die.

If There Were No Eternal Consciousness In A Man, If At The Bottom Of Everything There Were Only A Wild Ferment, A Power That Twisting In Dark Passions Produced Everything Great Or Inconsequential; If An Unfathomable, Insatiable Emptiness Lay Hid Beneath Everything, What Would Life Be But Despair?

The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

This Is The Miracle Of Life: That Each Person Who Heeds Him Or Herself Knows What No Scientist Can Ever Know: Who He Or She Is.

Are You Not Aware That There Comes A Midnight Hour When Everyone Must Unmask...

To Venture Causes Anxiety. Not To Venture Is To Lose Oneself.

About As Genuine As Tea Made From A Bit Of Paper Which Once Lay In A Drawer Beside Another Piece Of Paper Which Had Been Used To Wrap Up A Few Tea Leaves From Which Tea Had Already Been Made Three Times.

In Addition To My Other Numerous Acquaintances, I Have One More Intimate Confidant. ... My Depression Is The Most Faithful Mistress I Have Known - No Wonder, Then, That I Return The Love.

Destroy Your Primitivity, And You Will Most Probably Get Along Well In The World, Maybe Achieve Great Success--but Eternity Will Reject You. Follow Up Your Primitivity, And You Will Be Shipwrecked In Temporality, But Accepted By Eternity.

It Is Tragic-comic To See That All This Knowledge And Understanding Exercises No Power At All Over Men's Lives, That Their Lives Do Not Express In The Remotest Way What They Have Understood, But Rather The Opposite.

The Thing Is To Understand Myself: The Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is True For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Can Live And Die. That Is What I Now Recognize As The Most Important Thing.

Irony Is A Disciplinarian Feared Only By Those Who Do Not Know It, But Cherished By Those Who Do. He Who Does Not Understand Irony And Has No Ear For Its Whispering Lacks Of What Might Called The Absolute Beginning Of The Personal Life. He Lacks What At Moments Is Indispensable For The Personal Life, Lacks Both The Regeneration And Rejuvenation, The Cleaning Baptism Of Irony That Redeems The Soul From Having Its Life In Finitude Though Living Boldly And Energetically In Finitude.

However Much One Generation Learns From Another, It Can Never Learn From Its Predecessor The Genuinely Human Factor. In This Respect Every Generation Begins Afresh. Thus No Generation Has Learned From Another How To Love, No Generation Can Begin Other Than At The Beginning.

Future Is Everything That Past Has Forgotten.

I Must Find A Truth That Is True For Me.

No One Is So Terribly Deceived As He Who Does Not Himself Suspect It.

Therefore Do Not Deceive Yourself! Of All Deceivers Fear Most Yourself!

My Scholarly Expectation Is Then That I May Succeed In Becoming Clever In Philosophy In Spite Of My Stupidity.

That Is The Road We All Have To Take - Over The Bridge Of Sight Into Eternity.

A Human Being Is A Spirit. But What Is Spirit? Spirit Is The Self. But What Is Self? The Self Is A Relation That Relates Itself To Itself Or Is The Relation's Relating Itself To Itself In The Relation.

And If Something Should Be Found, Particularly In The First Part Of The Dissertation, That One Is Generally Not Accustomed To Come Across In Scholarly Writings, The Reader Must Forgive My Jocundity, Just As I, In Order To Lighten The Burden, Sometimes Sing At My Work.

If A Man Cannot Forget, He Will Never Amount To Much.

In The Deepest Sense, The Being In A State Of Sin Is The Sin, The Particular Sins Are Not The Continuation Of Sin, They Are Expressions Of Its Continuation.

There Can Be No Faith Without Risk.

The Present Generation, Wearied By Its Chimerical Efforts, Relapses Into Complete Indolence. Its Condition Is That Of A Man Who Has Only Fallen Asleep Towards Morning: First Of All Come Great Dreams, Then A Feeling Of Laziness, And Finally A Witty Or Clever Excuse For Remaining In Bed.

What Labels Me, Negates Me.

The Commandment Is That You Shall Love, But When You Understand Life And Yourself, Then It Is As If You Should Not Need To Be Commanded, Because To Love Human Beings Is Still The Only Thing Worth Living For; Without This Life You Really Do Not Live.

I Go Fishing For A Thousand Monsters In The Depths Of My Own Self

This, Then, Is The Ultimate Paradox Of Thought: To Want To Discover Something That Thought Itself Cannot Think.

. . .the Larger The Crowd, The More Probable That That Which It Praises Is Folly, And The More Improbable That It Is Truth; And The Most Improbable Of All That It Is Any Eternal Truth.

The Question Is Not "to Be Or Not To Be," It Is What We Should Be Until We Are Not.

Be Or Not To Be

Truth Is Not Introduced Into The Individual From Without, But Was Within Him All The Time.

A Poet Is An Unhappy Creature Whose Heart Is Tortured By Deepest Suffering But Whose Lips Are So Formed That When His Sighs And Cries Stream Out Over Them, Their Sound Beomes Like The Sound Of Beautiful Music . . . . And Men Flock About The Poet Saying, Sing For Us Soon Again; That Is To Say, May New Sufferings Torture Your Soul, And May Your Lips Continue To Be Formed As Before.

I Do Not Care For Anything. I Do Not Care To Ride, For The Exercise Is Too Violent. I Do Not Care To Walk, Walking Is Too Strenuous. I Do Not Care To Lie Down, For I Should Either Have To Remain Lying, And I Do Not Care To Do That, Or I Should Have To Get Up Again, And I Do Not Care To Do That Either. Summa Summarum: I Do Not Care At All.

Patience Is Necessary, And One Cannot Reap Immediately Where One Has Sown.

Freedom's Possibility Is Not The Ability To Choose The Good Or The Evil. The Possibility Is To Be Able.

The Only Analogy I Have Before Me Is Socrates. My Task Is A Socratic Task, To Revise The Definition Of What It Is To Be A Christian. For My Part I Do Not Call Myself A "christian" (thus Keeping The Ideal Free), But I Am Able To Make It Evident That The Others Are Still Less Than I.

A Curiously Interested Observer Sees A Great Deal, A Scientifically Interested Observer Is Worthy Of All Honor, And Anxiously Interested Observer Sees What Others Do Not See, But A Crazy Observer Sees Perhaps The Most, His Observation Is More Intense And More Persistent, Just As The Senses Of Certain Animals Are Sharper Than Those Of Man.

Men Think That It Is Impossible For A Human Being To Love His Enemies, For Enemies Are Hardly Able To Endure The Sight Of One Another. Well, Then, Shut Your Eyes--and Your Enemy Looks Just Like Your Neighbor.

God Does Not Think; He Creates. He Does Not Exist; He Is Eternal.

You Train Yourself In The Art Of Being Mysterious To Everyone. My Dear Friend! What If There Were No One, Who Cared About Guessing Your Riddle, What Pleasure Would You Then Take In It?

To Venture Causes Anxiety, But Not To Venture Is To Lose One's Self.... And To Venture In The Highest Is Precisely To Be Conscious Of One's Self.

Seek First God's Kingdom, That Is, Become Like The Lilies And The Birds, Become Perfectly Silent - Then Shall The Rest Be Added Unto You.

Preparation For Becoming Attentive To Christianity Does Not Consist In Reading Many Books ... But In Fuller Immersion In Existence.

I'm So Misunderstood That People Misunderstand Me Even When I Tell Them I'm Misunderstood.

The Highest And Most Beautiful Things In Life Are Not To Be Heard About, Nor Read About, Nor Seen But, If One Will, Are To Be Lived.

Where Am I? Who Am I? How Did I Come To Be Here? What Is This Thing Called The World? How Did I Come Into The World? Why Was I Not Consulted? And If I Am Compelled To Take Part In It, Where Is The Director? I Want To See Him.

It Seems To Be My Destiny To Discourse On Truth, Insofar As I Discover It, In Such A Way That All Possible Authority Is Simultaneously Demolished.

In Actuality, No One Ever Sank So Deep That He Could Not Sink Deeper, And There May Be One Or Many Who Sank Deeper. So It Is Always Possible To Be Happy And Grateful That Things Are Not Worse!

Thus Our Own Age Is Essentially One Of Understanding, And On The Average, Perhaps, More Knowledgeable Than Any Former Generation, But It Is Without Passion. Every One Knows A Great Deal, We All Know Which Way We Ought To Go And All The Different Ways We Can Go, But Nobody Is Willing To Move.

No One May Pride Himself At Being More Than An Individual, And No One Despondently Think That He Is Not An Individual.

Dread Is A Womanish Debility In Which Freedom Swoons. Psychologically Speaking, The Fall Into Sin Always Occurs In Impotence. But Dread Is At The Same Time The Most Egotistic Thing.

O Luther, You Had 95 Theses . . . The Matter Is Far More Terrible-there Is Only One Thesis. The Christianity Of The New Testament Does Not Exist At All. Here There Is Nothing To Reform.

It Will Be Easy For Us The First Time We Receive That Ball Of Yarn From Ariadne (love) And Then Go Through All The Mazes Of The Labyrinth (life) And Kill The Monster. But How Many There Are Who Plunge Into Life (the Labyrinth) Without Taking That Precaution?

I Found I Had Less And Less To Say, Until Finally, I Became Silent, And Began To Listen. I Discovered In The Silence, The Voice Of God

The Difference Between A Man Who Faces Death For The Sake Of An Idea And An Imitator Who Goes In Search Of Martyrdom Is That Whilst The Former Expresses His Idea Most Fully In Death It Is The Strange Feeling Of Bitterness Which Comes From Failure That The Latter Really Enjoys; The Former Rejoices In His Victory, The Latter In His Suffering.

The Tyrant Dies And His Rule Is Over, The Martyr Dies And His Rule Begins.

If I Were To Wish For Anything, I Should Not Wish For Wealth And Power, But For The Passionate Sense Of The Potential, For The Eye Which, Ever Young And Ardent, Sees The Possible. Pleasure Disappoints, Possibility Never. And What Wine Is So Sparkling, What So Fragrant, What So Intoxicating, As Possibility!

Philosophy Is Perfectly Right In Saying That Life Must Be Understood Backward. But Then One Forgets The Other Clause - That It Must Be Lived Forward. The More One Thinks Through This Clause, The More One Concludes That Life In Temporality Never Becomes Properly Understandable, Simply Because Never At Any Time Does One Get Perfect Repose To Take The Stance - Backward.

To Despair Over One's Sins Indicates That Sin Has Become Or Wants To Be Internally Consistent. It Wants Nothing To Do With The Good, Does Not Want To Be So Weak As To Listen Occasionally To Other Talk. No, It Insists On Listening Only To Itself, On Having Dealings Only With Itself; It Closes Itself Up Within Itself, Indeed, Locks Itself Inside One More Inclosure, And Protects Itself Against Every Attack Or Pursuit By The Good By Despairing Over Sin.

In The Life Of The Individual When Love Awakens It Is Older Than Everything Else, Because When It Exists It Seems As If It Has Existed For A Long Time; It Presupposes Itself Back Into The Distant Past Until All Searching Ends In The Inexplicable Origin.

There Are, As Is Known, Insects That Die In The Moment Of Fertilization. So It Is With All Joy: Life's Highest, Most Splendid Moment Of Enjoyment Is Accompanied By Death.

How Did I Get Into The World? Why Was I Not Asked About It And Why Was I Not Informed Of The Rules And Regulations But Just Thrust Into The Ranks As If I Had Been Bought By A Peddling Shanghaier Of Human Beings? How Did I Get Involved In This Big Enterprise Called Actuality? Why Should I Be Involved? Isn't It A Matter Of Choice? And If I Am Compelled To Be Involved, Where Is The Manager—i Have Something To Say About This. Is There No Manager? To Whom Shall I Make My Complaint?

Rules And Regulations

Who Am I? How Did I Come Into The World? Why Was I Not Consulted?

Questions And Answers

The Daily Press Is The Evil Principle Of The Modern World, And Time Will Only Serve To Disclose This Fact With Greater And Greater Clearness. The Capacity Of The Newspaper For Degeneration Is Sophistically Without Limit, Since It Can Always Sink Lower And Lower In Its Choice Of Readers. At Last It Will Stir Up All Those Dregs Of Humanity Which No State Or Government Can Control.

The More People Who Believe Something, The More Apt It Is To Be Wrong. The Person Who's Right Often Has To Stand Alone.

It Is Modest Of The Nightingale Not To Require Anyone To Listen To It; But It Is Also Proud Of The Nightingale Not To Care Whether Any One Listens To It Or Not.

Christ Has Not Only Spoken To Us By His Life But Has Also Spoken For Us By His Death.

Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.

So To Be Sick Unto Death Is, Not To Be Able To Die-yet Not As Though There Were Hope Of Life; No, The Hopelessness In This Case Is That Even The Last Hope, Death, Is Not Available. When Death Is The Greatest Danger, One Hopes For Life; But When One Becomes Acquainted With An Even More Dreadful Danger, One Hopes For Death. So When The Danger Is So Great That Death Has Become One's Hope, Despair Is The Disconsolateness Of Not Being Able To Die.

There Is Nothing Everyone Is So Afraid Of As Being Told How Vastly Much He Is Capable Of. You Are Capable Of - Do You Want To Know? - You Are Capable Of Living In Poverty; You Are Capable Of Standing Almost Any Kind Of Maltreatment, Abuse, Etc. But You Do Not Wish To Know About It, Isn't That So? You Would Be Furious With Him Who Told You So, And Only Call That Person Your Friend Who Bolsters You In Saying: 'no, This I Cannot Bear, This Is Beyond My Strength, Etc.

Backwards Understood Be Only Can But, Forwards Lived Be Must Life.

Do You Know Of Any More Overwhelming And Humbling Expression For God's Condescension And Extravagance Towards Us Human Beings Than That He Places Himself, So To Say, On The Same Level Of Choice With The World, Just So That We May Be Able To Choose; That God, If Language Dare Speak Thus, Woos Humankind - That He, The Eternally Strong One, Woos Sapless Humanity? Yet, How Insignificant Is The Young Lover's Choice Between Her Pursuers By Comparison With This Choice Between God And The World.

Take A Chance And You May Lose. Take Not A Chance And You Have Lost Already.

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

Busyness, Keeping Up With Others, Hustling Hither And Yon, Makes It Almost Impossible For An Individual To Form A Heart.

The Present State Of The World And The Whole Of Life Is Diseased. If I Were A Doctor And Were Asked For My Advice, I Should Reply, 'create Silence'.

All The Shrewdness Of 'man' Seeks One Thing: To Be Able To Live Without Responsibility.

The Most Painful State Of Being Is Remembering The Future, Particularly The One You'll Never Have.

Reflection Is Not The Evil; But A Reflective Condition And The Deadlock Which It Involves, By Transforming The Capacity For Action Into A Means Of Escape From Action, Is Both Corrupt And Dangerous, And Leads In The End To A Retrograde Movement.

Men Are Not On Such Intimate Terms With The Sublime That They Really Can Believe In It

With The Daguerreotype, Everyone Will Be Able To Have Their Portrait Taken . . . And At The Same Time Everything Is Being Done To Make Us All Look Exactly The Same.

There Are Men Who Are Wanting In The Comparative, They As A Rule Are The Most Interesting.

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It Doesn't Occur To Me At This Moment To Say More; Another Time, Perhaps Tomorrow, I May Have More To Say, But Always The Same Thing And About The Same, For Only Gypsies, Robber Gangs And Swindlers Follow The Adage That Where A Person Has Once Been He Is Never To Go Again.

I Stick My Finger Into Existence.. It Smells Of Nothing. Where Am I? Who Am I? What Is This Thing Called The World? What Does This Word Mean?

When You Were Called, Did You Answer Or Did You Not? Perhaps Softly And In A Whisper?

Spiritual Superiority Only Sees The Individual. But Alas, Ordinarily We Human Beings Are Sensual And, Therefore, As Soon As It Is A Gathering, The Impression Changes - We See Something Abstract, The Crowd, And We Become Different. But In The Eyes Of God, The Infinite Spirit, All The Millions That Have Lived And Now Live Do Not Make A Crowd, He Only Sees Each Individual.

It Is So Hard To Believe Because It Is So Hard To Obey.

It Is Not Where We Breathe, But Where We Love, That We Live.

A Man Who As A Physical Being Is Always Turned Toward The Outside, Thinking That His Happiness Lies Outside Him, Finally Turns Inward And Discovers That The Source Is Within Him.

In My Great Melancholy, I Loved Life, For I Love My Melancholy.

To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.

Most People Rush After Pleasure So Fast That They Rush Right Past It.

Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.

Not Just In Commerce But In The World Of Ideas Too Our Age Is Putting On A Veritable Clearance Sale. Everything Can Be Had So Dirt Cheap That One Begins To Wonder Whether In The End Anyone Will Want To Make A Bid.

Language Has Time As Its Element; All Other Media Have Space As Their Element.

Human Relations Are Like The Irregular Verbs In A Number Of Languages Where Nearly All Verbs Are Irregular.

The Truth Must Essentially Be Regarded As In Conflict With This World; The World Has Never Been So Good, And Will Never Become So Good That The Majority Will Desire The Truth.

The Most Common Form Of Despair Is Not Being Who You Are.

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

During The First Period Of A Man's Life The Greatest Danger Is Not To Take The Risk.

The Human Race In The Course Of Time Has Taken The Liberty Of Softening And Softening Christianity Until At Last We Have Contrived To Make It Exactly The Opposite Of What It Is In The New Testament.

The Self Is A Relation Which Relates Itself To Its Own Self, Or It Is That In The Relation That The Relation Relates Itself To Its Own Self; The Self Is Not The Relation But That The Relation Relates Itself To Its Own Self.

Dread Is A Sympathetic Antipathy And An Antipathetic Sympathy.

Deep Within Every Human Being There Still Lives The Anxiety Over The Possibility Of Being Alone In The World, Forgotten By God, Overlooked Among The Millions And Millions In This Enormous Household. One Keeps This Anxiety At A Distance By Looking At The Many Round About Who Are Related To Him As Kin And Friends, But The Anxiety Is Still There, Nevertheless, And One Hardly Dares Think Of How He Would Feel If All This Were Taken Away.

I Do Not Lack The Courage To Think A Thought Whole.

Father In Heaven! When The Thought Of Thee Wakes In Our Hearts Let It Not Awaken Like A Frightened Bird That Flies About In Dismay, But Like A Child Waking From Its Sleep With A Heavenly Smile.

Worship Isn't God's Show. God Is The Audience. God's Watching. The Congregation, They Are The Actors In This Drama. Worship Is Their Show. And The Minister Is Just Reminding The People Of Their Forgotten Lines.

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Robert Delaunay

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