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Every Human Being Is Tried This Way In The Active Service Of Expectancy. Now Comes The Fulfillment And Relieves Him, But Soon He Is Again Placed On Reconnaissance For Expectancy; Then He Is Again Relieved, But As Long As There Is Any Future For Him, He Has Not Yet Finished His Service. And While Human Life Goes On This Way In Very Diverse Expectancy, Expecting Very Different Things According To Different Times And Occasions And In Different Frames Of Mind, All Life Is Again One Nightwatch Of Expectancy.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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Every Human Being Is

Soren Kierkegaard

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Every Human Being Is Tried This Way In The Active Service Of Expectancy. Now Comes The Fulfillment And Relieves Him, But Soon He Is Again Placed On Reconnaissance For Expectancy; Then He Is Again Relieved, But As Long As There Is Any Future For Him, He Has Not Yet Finished His Service. And While Human Life Goes On This Way In Very Diverse Expectancy, Expecting Very Different Things According To Different Times And Occasions And In Different Frames Of Mind, All Life Is Again One Nightwatch Of Expectancy.

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Hope Is Passion For What Is Possible.

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

Pleasure Disappoints, Possibility Never. And What Wine Is So Sparkling, Who So Fragrant, What So Intoxicating, As Possibility.

With Respect To Love We Speak Continually About Perfection And The Perfect Person. With Respect To Love Christianity Also Speaks Continually About Perfection And The Perfect Person. Alas, But We Men Talk About Finding The Perfect Person In Order To Love Him. Christianity Speaks About Being The Perfect Person Who Limitlessly Loves The Person He Sees.

...the Person Who Surrenders Absolutely To God, With No Reservations, Is Absolutely Safe. From This Safe Hiding-place He Can See The Devil , But The Devil Cannot See Him.

The Paradox Is Really The Pathos Of Intellectual Life And Just As Only Great Souls Are Exposed To Passions It Is Only The Great Thinker Who Is Exposed To What I Call Paradoxes, Which Are Nothing Else Than Grandiose Thoughts In Embryo.

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

How Ironical That It Is By Means Of Speech That Man Can Degrade Himself Below The Level Of Dumb Creation -- For A Chatterbox Is Truly Of A Lower Category Than A Dumb Creature.

In The End, Therefore, Money Will Be The One Thing People Will Desire, Which Is Moreover Only Representative, An Abstraction. Nowadays A Young Man Hardly Envies Anyone His Gifts, His Art, The Love Of A Beautiful Girl, Or His Fame; He Only Envies Him His Money. Give Me Money, He Will Say, And I Am Saved...he Would Die With Nothing To Reproach Himself With, And Under The Impression That If Only He Had Had The Money He Might Really Have Lived And Might Even Have Achieved Something Great.

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!

The Individual (no Matter How Well-meaning He Might Be, No Matter How Much Strength He Might Have, If Only He Would Use It) Does Not Have The Passion To Rip Himself Away From Either The Coils Of Reflection Or The Seductive Ambiguities Of Reflection; Nor Do The Surroundings And Times Have Any Events Or Passions, But Rather Provide A Negative Setting Of A Habit Of Reflection, Which Plays With Some Illusory Project Only To Betray Him In The End With A Way Out: It Shows Him That The Most Clever Thing To Do Is Nothing At All.

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.

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

Dread Is A Sympathetic Antipathy And An Antipathetic Sympathy.

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.

...it Is Not The Obscure Passages In Scripture That Bind You But The Ones You Understand. With These You Are To Comply At Once. If You Understood Only One Passage In All Of Scripture, Well, Then You Must Do That First Of All. It Will Be This Passage God Asks You About. Do Not First Sit Down And Ponder The Obscure Passages. God's Word Is Given In Order That You Shall Act According To It, Not That You Gain Expertise In Interpreting It.

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

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

Life Has Its Own Hidden Forces Which You Can Only Discover By Living.

Only One Human Being Recognized As One's Neighbour Is Necessary In Order To Cure A Man Of Self-love

The Truth Is A Snare: You Cannot Have It, Without Being Caught. You Cannot Have The Truth In Such A Way That You Catch It, But Only In Such A Way That It Catches You.

As I Stood Alone And Forsaken, And The Power Of The Sea And The Battle Of The Elements Reminded Me Of My Own Nothingness, And On The Other Hand, The Sure Flight Of The Birds Recalled The Words Spoken By Christ: Not A Sparrow Shall Fall On The Ground Without Your Father: Then, All At Once, I Felt How Great And How Small I Was; Then Did Those Two Mighty Forces, Pride And Humility, Happily Unite In Friendship.

If Anyone On The Verge Of Action Should Judge Himself According To The Outcome, He Would Never Begin.

Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom.

But The Life Of Freedom Requires A Beginning, And Here A Beginning Is A Resolution, And The Resolution Has Its Work And Its Pain-thus The Beginning Has Its Difficulty.

Which Is More Difficult, To Awaken One Who Sleeps Or To Awaken One Who, Awake, Dreams That He Is Awake?

Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility

God Is Present In The Moment Of Choice, Not In Order To Watch But In Order To Be Chosen. Therefore, Each Person Must Choose. Terrible Is The Battle, In A Person's Innermost Being, Between God And The World. The Crowning Risk Involved Lies In The Possession Of Choice.

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

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

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

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.

The Person Who Praises God Is On The Tracks Of Justice.

Thought Provoking

People Generally Think That It Is The World, The Environment, External Relationships, Which Stand In One's Way, In The Way Of Ones' Good Fortune... And At Bottom It Is Always Man Himself That Stands In His Own Way.

The Function Of Prayer Is Not To Influence God, But Rather To Change The Nature Of The One Who Prays.

Imagine Hidden In A Simpler Exterior A Secret Receptacle Wherein The Most Precious Treasure Is Deposited - There Is A Spring Which Has To Be Pressed, But The Spring Is Hidden, And The Pressure Must Have A Certain Strength, So That An Accidental Pressure Would Not Be Sufficient. So Likewise Is The Hope Of Eternity Hidden In Man's Inmost Parts, And Affliction Is The Pressure. When It Presses The Hidden Spring, And Strongly Enough, Then The Contents Appear In All Their Glory.

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?

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

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

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.

Doubt Is Thought's Despair; Despair Is Personality's Doubt. . . . Doubt And Despair . . . Belong To Completely Different Spheres; Different Sides Of The Soul Are Set In Motion. . . . Despair Is An Expression Of The Total Personality, Doubt Only Of Thought.

As The Arrow, Loosed From The Bow By The Hand Of The Practiced Archer, Does Not Rest Till It Has Reached The Mark, So Men Pass From God To God. He Is The Mark For Which They Have Been Created, And They Do Not Rest Till They Find Their Rest In Him.

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.

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.

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

Philosophy Always Requires Something More, Requires The Eternal, The True, In Contrast To Which Even The Fullest Existence As Such Is But A Happy Moment.

Learning To Know Anxiety Is An Adventure Which Every Man Has To Affront If He Would Not Go To Perdition Either By Not Having Known Anxiety Or By Sinking Under It. He Therefore Who Has Leaned Rightly To Be In Anxiety Has Learned The Most Important Thing.

No, I Won't Leave The World--i'll Enter A Lunatic Asylum And See If The Profundity Of Insanity Reveals To Me The Riddles Of Life. Idiot, Why Didn't I Do That Long Ago, Why Has It Taken Me So Long To Understand What It Means When The Indians Honour The Insane, Step Aside For Them? Yes, A Lunatic Asylum--don't You Think I May End Up There?

Everyone Looks The Same To Me In A Photograph: Stupid.

For Like A Poisonous Breath Over The Fields, Like A Mass Of Locusts Over Egypt, So The Swarm Of Excuses Is A General Plaque, A Ruinous Infection Among Men, That Eats Off The Sprouts Of The Eternal.

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

The Spiritual Differs From The Religious In Being Able To Endure Isolation. The Rank Of A Spiritual Person Is Proportionate To His Strength For Enduring Isolation, Whereas We Religious People Are Constantly In Need Of 'the Others,' The Herd. We Religious Folks Die, Or Despair, If We Are Not Reassured By Being In The Assembly, Of The Same Opinion As The Congregation, And So On. But The Christianity Of The New Testament Is Precisely Related To The Isolation Of The Spiritual Man.

My Standpoint Is Armed Neutrality.

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.

To Be A Woman Is Something So Strange, So Confusing And So Complicated That Only A Woman Could Put Up With It.

One Can Advise Comfortably From A Safe Port.

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

People Demand Freedom Of Speech As A Compensation For The Freedom Of Thought Which They Seldom Use.

God Creates Out Of Nothing. Wonderful You Say. Yes, To Be Sure, But He Does What Is Still More Wonderful: He Makes Saints Out Of Sinners.

Whoever Has Learned To Be Anxious In The Right Way Has Learned The Ultimate.

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

What A Difference! Under The Esthetic Sky, Everything Is Buoyant, Beautiful, Transient! When Ethics Arrives On The Scene, Everything Becomes Harsh, Angular And Infinitely Boring

The Melancholy Have The Best Sense Of The Comic, The Opulent Often The Best Sense Of The Rustic, The Dissolute Often The Best Sense Of The Moral, And The Doubter Often The Best Sense Of The Religious.

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.

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 Greatest Thing Each Person Can Do Is To Give Himself To God Utterly And Unconditionally - Weaknesses, Fears, And All. For God Loves Obedience More Than Good Intentions Or Second-best Offerings, Which Are All Too Often Made Under The Guise Of Weakness.

People Commonly Travel The World Over To See Rivers And Mountains, New Stars, Garish Birds, Freak Fish, Grotesque Breeds Of Human; They Fall Into An Animal Stupor That Gapes At Existence And They Think They Have Seen Something.

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

It Is A Very Curious Thing About Superstition. One Would Expect That The Man Who Had Once Seen His Morbid Dreams Were Not Fulfilled Would Abandon Them For The Future; But On The Contrary They Grow Even Stronger Just As The Love Of Gambling Increases In A Man Who Has Once Lost In A Lottery.

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

What I Really Need Is To Get Clear About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Must Precede Every Act. What Matters Is To Find A Purpose, To See What It Really Is That God Wills That I Shall Do; 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.

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

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.

But Doubt Is Wily And Cunning And Never, As It Is Sometimes Said To Be, Loud Or Defiant. It Is Unassuming And Sly, Not Bold Or Assertive - And The More Unassuming, The More Dangerous.

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.

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

The Bible Is Very Easy To Understand. But We Christians Are A Bunch Of Scheming Swindlers. We Pretend To Be Unable To Understand It Because We Know Very Well That The Minute We Understand, We Are Obliged To Act Accordingly.

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.

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.

If I Am Capable Of Grasping God Objectively, I Do Not Believe, But Precisely Because I Cannot Do This I Must Believe. If I Wish To Preserve Myself In Faith I Must Constantly Be Intent Upon Holding Fast The Objective Uncertainty So As To Remain Out Upon The Deep, Over Seventy Thousand Fathoms Of Water, Still Preserving My Faith.

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.

Where There Are Two People, There Is Untruth.

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

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

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

Talent Warms-up The Given (as They Say In Cookery) And Makes It Apparent; Genius Brings Something New. But Our Time Lets Talent Pass For Genius. They Want To Abolish The Genius, Deify The Genius, And Let Talent Forge Ahead.

...even The Richest Personality Is Nothing Before He Has Chosen Himself, And On The Other Hand Even What One Might Call The Poorest Personality Is Everything When He Has Chosen Himself; For The Great Thing Is Not To Be This Or That But To Be Oneself, And This Everyone Can Be If He Wills It.

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.

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

Critical Thinking

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.

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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

The Task Must Be Made Difficult, For Only The Difficult Inspires The Noble-hearted.

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

It Is Very Dangerous To Go Into Eternity With Possibilities Which One Has Oneself Prevented From Becoming Realities. A Possibility Is A Hint From God. One Must Follow It.

Every Human Being Is Tried This Way In The Active Service Of Expectancy. Now Comes The Fulfillment And Relieves Him, But Soon He Is Again Placed On Reconnaissance For Expectancy; Then He Is Again Relieved, But As Long As There Is Any Future For Him, He Has Not Yet Finished His Service. And While Human Life Goes On This Way In Very Diverse Expectancy, Expecting Very Different Things According To Different Times And Occasions And In Different Frames Of Mind, All Life Is Again One Nightwatch Of Expectancy.

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 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 God That Can Be Named Is Not God.

Compared With The Person Who Is Conscious Of His Despair, The Despairing Individual Who Is Ignorant Of His Despair Is Simply A Negativity Further Away From The Truth And Deliverance. . . . Yet Ignorance Is So Far From Breaking The Despair Or Changing Despair To Nondespairing That It Can In Fact Be The Most Dangerous Form Of Despair. . . . An Individual Is Furthest From Being Conscious Of Himself As Spirit When He Is Ignorant Of Being In Despair. But Precisely This-not To Be Conscious Of Oneself As Spirit-is Despair, Which Is Spiritlessness. . . .

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.

To Have Faith Is Precisely To Lose One's Mind So As To Win God.

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.

I Stick My Finger Into Existence And It Smells Of Nothing.

God Has Given Each Of Us Our "marching Order." Our Purpose Here On Earth Is To Find Those Orders And Carry Them Out. Those Orders Acknowledge Our Special Gifts.

Most People Believe That The Christian Commandments Are Intentionally A Little Too Severe

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

The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

Happiness Is The Greatest Hiding Place For Despair.

In Order To Learn True Humility (i Use This Expression To Describe The State Of Mind Under Discussion), It Is Good For A Person To Withdraw From The Turmoil Of The World (we See That Christ Withdrew When The People Wanted To Proclaim Him King As Well As When He Had To Walk The Thorny Path), For In Life Either The Depressing Or The Elevating Impression Is Too Dominant For A True Balance To Come About. Here, Of Course, Individuality Is Very Decisive.

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

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

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!

The Minority Is Always Stronger Than The Majority, Because The Minority Is Generally Formed By Those Who Really Have An Opinion.

Truth Has Always Had Many Loud Proclaimers, But The Question Is Whether A Person Will In The Deepest Sense Acknowledge The Truth, Allow It To Permeate His Whole Being, Accept All Its Consequences, And Not Have An Emergency Hiding Place For Himself And A Judas Kiss For The Consequence.

One Could Construe The Life Of Man As A Great Discourse In Which The Various People Represent Different Parts Of Speech (the Same Might Apply To States).

If Anyone Proposes To Believe, I.e., Imagines Himself To Believe, Because Many Good And Upright People Living Here On The Hill Have Believed, I.e., Have Said That They Believedthen He Is A Fool, And It Is Essentially Indifferent Whether He Believes On Account Of His Own And Perhaps A Widely Held Opinion About What Good And Upright People Believe, Or Believes A Münchhausen.

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.

Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk.

My Melancholy Is The Most Faithful Sweetheart I Have Had.

Never Cease Loving A Person, And Never Give Up Hope For Him, For Even The Prodigal Son Who Had Fallen Most Low, Could Still Be Saved; The Bitterest Enemy And Also He Who Was Your Friend Could Again Be Your Friend; Love That Has Grown Cold Can Kindle.

Falling In Love

The Most Common Despair Is...not Choosing, Or Willing, To Be Oneself...[but] The Deepest Form Of Despair Is To Choose To Be Another Than Oneself.

Worldly Wisdom Thinks That Love Is A Relationship Between Man And Man. Christianity Teaches That Love Is A Relationship Between Man-god-man, That Is, That God Is The Middle Term.

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

Questions And Answers

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

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.

Oh, Can I Really Believe The Poet's Tales, That When One First Sees The Object Of One's Love, One Imagines One Has Seen Her Long Ago, That All Love Like All Knowledge Is Remembrance, That Love Too Has Its Prophecies In The Individual.

This Is All That I've Known For Certain, That God Is Love. Even If I Have Been Mistaken On This Or That Point: God Is Nevertheless Love.

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.

Far From Idleness Being The Root Of All Evil, It Is Rather The Only True Good.

Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.

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.

The Truly Simple Way Of Presenting Christianity Is To Do It.

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

Maturity Consists In The Discovery That There Comes A Critical Moment Where Everything Is Reversed, After Which The Point Becomes To Understand More And More That There Is Something Which Cannot Be Understood.

Critical Moments

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

If You Think You Understand, It Isn't God.

Christianity Does Not Oppose Debauchery And Uncontrollable Passions And The Like As Much As It Opposes... Flat Mediocrity, This Nauseating Atmosphere, This Homey, Civil Togetherness, Where Admittedly Great Crimes, Wild Excesses, And Powerful Aberrations Cannot Easily Occur - But Where God's Unconditional Demand Has Even Greater Difficulty In Accomplishing What It Requires: The Majestic Obedience Of Submission.

Knowledge Of The Truth I May Perhaps Have Attained To; Happiness Certainly Not. What Shall I Do? Accomplish Something In The World, Men Tell Me. Shall I Then Publish My Grief To The World, Contribute One More Proof For The Wretchedness And Misery Of Existence, Perhaps Discover A New Flaw In Human Life, Hitherto Unnoticed? I Might Then Reap The Rare Reward Of Becoming Famous, Like The Man Who Discovered The Spots On Jupiter. I Prefer, However, To Keep Silent.

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.

The More A Man Can Forget, The Greater The Number Of Metamorphoses Which His Life Can Undergo; The More He Can Remember, The More Divine His Life Becomes.

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

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.

You Love The Accidental. A Smile From A Pretty Girl In An Interesting Situation, A Stolen Glance, That Is What You Are Hunting For, That Is A Motif For Your Aimless Fantasy. You Who Always Pride Yourself On Being An Observateur Must, In Return, Put Up With Becoming An Object Of Observation. Ah, You Are A Strange Fellow, One Moment A Child, The Next An Old Man; One Moment You Are Thinking Most Earnestly About The Most Important Scholarly Problems, How You Will Devote Your Life To Them, And The Next You Are A Lovesick Fool. But You Are A Long Way From Marriage.

Marriage Brings One Into Fatal Connection With Custom And Tradition, And Traditions And Customs Are Like The Wind And Weather, Altogether Incalculable.

It Is Intelligent To Ask Two Questions: (1) Is It Possible? (2) Can I Do It?. But It Is Unintelligent To Ask These Questions: (1) Is It Real? (2) Has My Neighbor Done It?

If I Had A Humble Spirit In My Service Who, When I Asked For A Glass Of Water, Brought Me The World's Costliest Wines Blended In A Chalice, I Should Dismiss Him, In Order To Teach Him That My Pleasure Consists, Not In What I Enjoy, But In Having My Own Way.

The More Men Believe An Idea To Be True The Greater The Likelihood That The Idea Is Mistaken. Those Who Are Right Usually Stand Alone.

Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.

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.

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.

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

What Is A Poet? An Unhappy Man Who Hides Deep Anguish In His Heart, But Whose Lips Are So Formed That When The Sigh And Cry Pass Through Them, It Sounds Like Lovely Music.... And People Flock Around The Poet And Say: 'sing Again Soon' - That Is, 'may New Sufferings Torment Your Soul But Your Lips Be Fashioned As Before, For The Cry Would Only Frighten Us, But The Music, That Is Blissful.

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

Death Cannot Explain Itself. The Earnestness Consists Precisely In This, That The Observer Must Explain It To Himself.

And This Is One Of The Most Crucial Definitions For The Whole Of Christianity; That The Opposite Of Sin Is Not Virtue But Faith.

In The Christianity Of Christendom The Cross Has Become Something Like The Child’s Hobby-horse And Trumpet.

Why I So Much Prefer Autumn To Spring Is That In The Autumn One Looks At Heaven--in The Spring At The Earth.

Genius Never Desires What Does Not Exist.

The Stone That Was Rolled Before Christ's Tomb Might Appropriately Be Called The Philosopher's Stone Because Its Removal Gave Not Only The Pharisees But, Now For 1800 Years, The Philosophers So Much To Think About.

In Order To Help Another Effectively, I Must Understand What He Understands. If I Do Not Know That, My Greater Understanding Will Be Of No Help To Him... Instruction Begins When You Put Yourself In His Place So That You May Understand What He Understands And In The Way He Understands It.

This Age Will Die Not As A Result Of Some Evil, But From A Lack Of Passion.

It Is The Normal State Of The Human Heart To Try To Build Its Identity Around Something Besides God.

What Looks Like Politics, And Imagines Itself To Be Political, Will One Day Unmask Itself As A Religious Movement.

Silence Is The Demon's Trap, And The More One Is Silenced, The More Terrible The Demon; But Silence Is Also The Divinity's Mutual Understanding With The Single Individual.

And This Is The Simple Truth - That To Live Is To Feel Oneself Lost. He Who Accepts It Has Already Begun To Find Himself, To Be On Firm Ground. Instinctively, As Do The Shipwrecked, He Will Look Around For Something To Which To Cling, And That Tragic, Ruthless Glance, Absolutely Sincere, Because It Is A Question Of His Salvation, Will Cause Him To Bring Order Into The Chaos Of His Life. These Are The Only Genuine Ideas; The Ideas Of The Shipwrecked. All The Rest Is Rhetoric, Posturing, Farce.

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

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

Christians Remind Me Of Schoolboys Who Want To Look Up The Answers To Their Math Problems In The Back Of The Book Rather Than Work Them Through.

In A Theatre It Happened That A Fire Started Off Stage. The Clown Came Out To Tell The Audience. They Thought It Was A Joke And Applauded. He Told Them Again, And They Became Still More Hilarious. This Is The Way, I Suppose, That The World Will Be Destroyed-amid The Universal Hilarity Of Wits And Wags Who Think It Is All A Joke.

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.

...he Who Always Hopes For The Best Becomes Old, Deceived By Life, And He Who Is Always Prepared For The Worst Becomes Old Prematurely; But He Who Has Faith, Retains Eternal Youth.

Hoping For The Best

...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.

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.

The Wisdom Of The Years Is Confusing. Only The Wisdom Of Eternity Is Edifying.

Do It Or Don't Do It - You Will Regret Both.

You Will Regret

As My Prayer Became More Attentive And Inward, I Had Less And Less To Say. I Finally Became Completely Silent... This Is How It Is. To Pray Does Not Mean To Listen To Oneself Speaking. Prayer Involves Becoming Silent, And Being Silent, And Waiting Until God Is Heard.

Most People Believe That The Christian Commandments, E.g. To Love One's Neighbor As Oneself, Are Intentionally A Little Too Severe - Like Setting A Clock Half An Hour Ahead To Make Sure Of Not Being Late In The Morning.

A 'no' Does Not Hide Anything, But A 'yes' Very Easily Becomes A Deception.

The Presence Of Irony Does Not Necessarily Mean That The Earnestness Is Excluded. Only Assistant Professors Assume That.

It Is (to Describe It Figuratively) As If An Author Were To Make A Slip Of The Pen, And As If This Clerical Error Became Conscious Of Being Such. Perhaps This Was No Error But In A Far Higher Sense Was An Essential Part Of The Whole Exposition. It Is, Then, As If This Clerical Error Were To Revolt Against The Author, Out Of Hatred For Him, Were To Forbid Him To Correct It, And Were To Say, "no, I Will Not Be Erased, I Will Stand As A Witness Against Thee, That Thou Art A Very Poor Writer."

No Time Of Life Is So Beautiful As The Early Days Of Love, When With Every Meeting, Every Glance, One Fetches Something New Home To Rejoice Over.

It Is Better To Try Something And Fail Than To Try Nothing And Succeed. The Result May Be The Same, But You Won't Be. We Always Grow More Through Defeats Than Victories.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

Don't You Know That A Midnight Hour Comes When Everyone Has To Take Off His Mask? Do You Think Life Always Lets Itself Be Trifled With? Do You Think You Can Sneak Off A Little Before Midnight To Escape This?

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

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?

Most Men Pursue Pleasure With Such Breathless Haste That They Hurry Past It.

To Pace About, Looking To Obtain Status, Looking To Attain 'importance' - I Can Think Of Nothing More Ridiculous.

I Am So Fed Up And Joyless That Not Only Have I Nothing To Fill My Soul, I Cannot Even Conceive Of Anything That Could Possibly Satisfy It - Alas, Not Even The Bliss Of Heaven.

Concepts, Like Individuals, Have Their Histories And Are Just As Incapable Of Withstanding The Ravages Of Time As Are Individuals. But In And Through All This They Retain A Kind Of Homesickness For The Scenes Of Their Childhood.

Shows Itself In The Notion That What May Be Objectively True May In The Mouth Of Certain People Become False.

Faith Is Precisely The Paradox That The Single Individual As The Single Individual Is Higher Than The Universal, Is Justified Before It, Not As Inferior To It But Superior - Yet In Such A Way, Please Note, That It Is The Single Individual Who, After Being Subordinate As The Single Individual To The Universal, Now By Means Of The Universal Becomes The Single Individual Who As The Single Individual Is Superior, That The Single Individual As The Single Individual Stands In An Absolute Relation To The Absolute.

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

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

Most Interesting

Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk. Everyday, I Walk Myself Into A State Of Well-being & Walk Away From Every Illness. I Have Walked Myself Into My Best Thoughts, And I Know Of No Thought So Burdensome That One Cannot Walk Away From It. But By Sitting Still, & The More One Sits Still, The Closer One Comes To Feeling Ill. Thus If One Just Keeps On Walking, Everything Will Be All Right.

Instruction Begins When You, The Teacher, Learn From The Learner; Put Yourself In His Place So That You May Understand . . . What He Learns And The Way He Understands It.

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.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

If A Man Wants To Set Up As An Innkeeper And He Does Not Succeed, It Is Not Comic. If, On The Contrary, A Girl Asks To Be Allowed To Set Up As A Prostitute And She Fails, As Sometimes Happens, It Is Comic.

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