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Human Justice Is Very Prolix, And Yet At Times Quite Mediocre; Divine Justice Is More Concise And Needs No Information From The Prosecution, No Legal Papers, No Interrogation Of Witnesses, But Makes The Guilty One His Own Informer And Helps Him With Eternity's Memory.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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Human Justice Is Very

Soren Kierkegaard

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Human Justice Is Very Prolix, And Yet At Times Quite Mediocre; Divine Justice Is More Concise And Needs No Information From The Prosecution, No Legal Papers, No Interrogation Of Witnesses, But Makes The Guilty One His Own Informer And Helps Him With Eternity's Memory.

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It Is Human Self-renunciation When A Man Denies Himself And The World Opens Up To Him. But It Is Christian Self-renunciation When He Denies Himself And, Because The World Precisely For This Shuts Itself Up To Him, He Must As One Thrust Out By The World Seek God's Confidence. The Double-danger Lies Precisely In Meeting Opposition There Where He Had Expected To Find Support, And He Has To Turn About Twice; Whereas The Merely Human Self-resignation Turns Once.

I Have Only One Friend, And That Is Echo. Why Is It My Friend? Because I Love My Sorrow, And Echo Does Not Take It Away From Me. I Have Only One Confidant, And That Is The Silence Of Night. Why Is It My Confidant? Because It Remains Silent.

Don't Forget To Love Yourself.

The Highest Of All Is Not To Understand The Highest But To Act Upon It.

Pleasure Disappoints; Possibility Never.

...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 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 Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.

There Is No Greater Evil One Can Suffer Than To Hate Reasonable Discourse.

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

My Sorrow Is My Castle.

A Possibility Is A Hint From God. One Must Follow 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.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

Whoever Thou Art, Whatever In Other Respects Thy Life May Be, My Friend, By Ceasing To Take Part (if Ordinarily Thou Doest) In The Public Worship Of God, As It Now Is (with The Claim That It Is The Christianity Of The New Testament), Thou Hast Constantly One Guilt The Less, And That A Great One: Thou Dost Not Take Part In Treating God As A Fool By Calling That The Christianity Of The New Testament Which Is Not The Christianity Of The New Testament.

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.

The Object Of (christian) Faith Is Not The Teaching But The Teacher.

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

Spirit Is The Third, Yet In Such A Way That One Can Speak Of A Synthesis Only When The Spirit Is Posited.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

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.

The Best News The World Has Ever Heard Came From A Graveyard - Christ Is Risen!

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

Deep Within Every Man There Lies The Dread Of Being Alone In The World, Forgotten By God, Overlooked Among The Tremendous Household Of Millions And Millions.

Love Believes All Things And Yet Is Never Deceived.

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

An Individual In Despair Despairs Over Something. . . . In Despairing Over Something, He Really Despair[s] Over Himself, And Now He Wants To Get Rid Of Himself. Consequently, To Despair Over Something Is Still Not Despair Proper. . . . To Despair Over Oneself, In Despair To Will To Be Rid Of Oneself-this Is The Formula For All Despair.

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

Trouble Is The Common Denominator Of Living. It Is The Great Equalizer.

To Be A Teacher In The Right Sense Is To Be A Learner. I Am Not A Teacher, Only A Fellow Student.

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

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

One Is Not Unpopular Because He Uses Peculiar Expressions; That Just So Happens; Such Terms Become A Fad, And By And By Everybody, Down To The Last Simpleton, Uses Them. But A Person Who Follows Through An Idea In His Mind Is, And Always Will Be, Essentially Unpopular. That Is Why Socrates Was Unpopular, Though He Did Not Use Any Special Terms, For To Grasp And Hold His 'ignorance' Requires Greater Vital Effort Than Understanding The Whole Of Hegel's Philosophy.

Jurists Say That A Capital Crime Submerges All Lesser Crimes; And So It Is With Faith. Its Absurdity Makes All Petty Difficultiesvanish.

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

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.

Faith Is Holding Onto Uncertainties With Passionate Conviction.

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

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

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.

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.

Leap Of Faith – Yes, But Only After Reflection

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.

Out Of Love, God Becomes Man. He Says: 'see, Here Is What It Is To Be A Human Being'.

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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

People Have An Idea That The Preacher Is An Actor On A Stage And They Are The Critics, Blaming Or Praising Him. What They Don't Know Is That They Are The Actors On The Stage; He (the Preacher) Is Merely The Prompter Standing In The Wings, Reminding Them Of Their Lost Lines.

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

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.

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

The Self-assured Believer Is A Greater Sinner In The Eyes Of God Than The Troubled Disbeliever.

I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If Anyone On The Verge Of Action Should Judge Himself According To The Outcome, He Would Never Begin. Even Though The Result May Gladden The Whole World, That Cannot Help The Hero; For He Knows The Result Only When The Whole Thing Is Over, And That Is Not How He Became A Hero, But By Virtue Of The Fact That He Began.

Truth Is Not Something You Can Appropriate Easily And Quickly. You Certainly Cannot Sleep Or Dream Yourself To The Truth. No, You Must Be Tried, Do Battle, And Suffer If You Are To Acquire The Truth For Yourself. It Is A Sheer Illusion To Think That In Relation To The Truth There Is An Abridgement, A Short Cut That Dispenses With The Necessity For Struggling For It.

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."

It Was Not To Save A Nation That Abraham Went To Sacrifice Isaac, Nor To Appease Angry Gods... Then Why Does Abraham Do It? For God's Sake... He Does It For The Sake Of God Because God Demands Proof Of His Faith... He Was Not Justified By Being Virtuous, But By Being An Individual Submitted To God In Faith.

What Is A Poet? An Unhappy Person Who Conceals Profound Anguish In His Heart But Whose Lips Are So Formed That As Sighs And Cries Pass Over Them They Sound Like Beautiful Music.

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.

Just As In The Great Moment Of Resignation One Does Not Mediate But Chooses, Now The Task Is To Gain Proficiency In Repeating The Impassioned Choice And, Existing, To Express It In Existence.

I Divide My Time As Follows: Half The Time I Sleep, The Other Half I Dream. I Never Dream When I Sleep, For That Would Be A Pity, For Sleeping Is The Highest Accomplishment Of Genius.

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

To Dare Is To Lose One's Footing Momentarily. Not To Dare Is To Lose Oneself.

Since My Earliest Childhood A Barb Of Sorrow Has Lodged In My Heart. As Long As It Stays I Am Ironic - If It Is Pulled Out I Shall Die.

Irony Is The Birth-pangs Of The Objective Mind (based Upon The Misrelationship, Discovered By The I , Between Existence And The Idea Of Existence). Humor Is The Birth -pangs Of The Absolute Mind (based Upon The Misrelationship, Discovered By The I , Between The I And The Idea Of The I .

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.

Just As In Earthly Life Lovers Long For The Moment When They Are Able To Breathe Forth Their Love For Each Other, To Let Their Souls Blend In A Soft Whisper, So The Mystic Longs For The Moment When In Prayer He Can, As It Were, Creep Into God.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved, But A Reality To Be Experienced.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Listen To The Cry Of A Woman In Labor At The Hour Of Giving Birth - Look At The Dying Man's Struggle At His Last Extremity, And Then Tell Me Whether Something That Begins And Ends Thus Could Be Intended For Enjoyment.

Theology Sits Rouged At The Window And Courts Philosophy's Favor, Offering To Sell Her Charms To It.

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

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

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.

Where There Are Two People, There Is Untruth.

It Was Completely Fruitless To Quarrel With The World, Whereas The Quarrel With Oneself Was Occasionally Fruitful And Always, She Had To Admit, Interesting.

Positive Attitude

The More A Person Limits Himself, The More Resourceful He Becomes.

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.

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.

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

The Ever Increasing Intensity Of Despair Depends Upon The Degree Of Consciousness Or Is Proportionate To This Increase: The Greater The Degree Of Consciousness, The More Intensive The Despair. This Is Everywhere Apparent, Most Clearly In Despair At Its Maximum And Minimum. The Devil's Despair Is The Most Intensive Despair, For The Devil Is Sheer Spirit And Hence Unqualified Consciousness And Transparency; There Is No Obscurity In The Devil That Could Serve As A Mitigating Excuse. Therefore, His Despair Is The Most Absolute Defiance. . . .

It Is A Wonderful Thing To See A First-rate Philosopher At Prayer. Tough-minded Thinking And Tenderhearted Reverence Are Friends, Not Enemies. We Have For Too Long Separated The Head From The Heart, And We Are The Lesser For It. We Love God With The Mind And We Love God With The Heart. In Reality, We Are Descending With The Mind Into The Heart And There Standing Before God In Ceaseless Wonder And Endless Praise. As The Mind And The Heart Work In Concert, A Kind Of Loving Rationality Pervades All We Say And Do. This Brings Unity To Us And Glory To God.

It Goes Against The Grain For Me To Do What So Often Happens, To Speak Inhumanly About The Great As If A Few Millennia Were An Immense Distance. I Prefer To Speak Humanly About It, As If It Happened Yesterday, And Let Only The Greatness Itself Be The Distance.

Our Life Always Expresses The Result Of Our Dominant Thoughts.

Future Is Everything That Past Has Forgotten.

There Is Nothing With Which Every Man Is So Afraid As Getting To Know How Enormously Much He Is Capable Of Doing And Becoming.

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

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.

A Road Well Begun Is The Battle Half Won. The Important Thing Is To Make A Beginning And Get Under Way.

Philosophy Is Life's Dry-nurse, Who Can Take Care Of Us - But Not Suckle Us.

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.

Love Is All, It Gives All, And It Takes All.

Choose To Be Who You Are. . . The Individual Who Would Become A Person Must At Some Point Take Over His Entire Being - Must, That Is, Choose Herself.

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

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

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.

What If Everything In The World Were A Misunderstanding, What If Laughter Were Really Tears?

. . .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.

To Stand On One Leg And Prove God's Existence Is A Very Different Thing From Going On One's Knees And Thanking Him.

It Is A Frightful Satire And An Epigram On The Modern Age That The Only Use It Knows For Solitude Is To Make It A Punishment, A Jail Sentence.

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

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.

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

Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility

Idleness, We Are Accustomed To Say, Is The Root Of All Evil. To Prevent This Evil, Work Is Recommended.... Idleness As Such Is By No Means A Root Of Evil; On The Contrary, It Is Truly A Divine Life, If One Is Not Bored.

Teach Me, 0 God, Not To Torture Myself, Not To Make A Martyr Out Of Myself Through Stifling Reflection, But Rather Teach Me To Breathe Deeply In Faith.

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.

I Would Rather Be A Swineherd, Understood By The Swine, Than A Poet Misunderstood By Men.

What I Really Need Is To Get Clear Out About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Precedes Every Act.

Ulysses Was Not Comely, But He Was Eloquent, Yet He Fired Two Goddesses Of The Sea With Love

Hope Is Passion For What Is Possible.

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.

With Respect To Physical Existence, One Needs Little, And To The Degree That One Needs Less, The More Perfect One Is.

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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.

When All Combine In Every Way To Make Everything Easier, People Will Want Difficulty. I Conceived It As My Task To Make Difficulties Everywhere.

Without Risk, Faith Is An Impossibility.

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.

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.

The Gods Were Bored And So They Created Man. Adam Was Bored Because He Was Alone, So Eve Was Created. Thus Boredom Entered The World, And Increased In Proportion To The Increase In Population. Adam Was Bored Alone, Then Adam And Eve Were Bored Together; Them Adam And Eve And Cain And Abel Were Bored En Famille; Then The Population Of The World Increased, And The People Were Bored En Masse.

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

This Fact, That The Opposite Of Sin Is By No Means Virtue, Has Been Overlooked. The Latter Is Partly A Pagan View, Which Is Content With A Merely Human Standard, And Which For That Very Reason Does Not Know What Sin Is, That All Sin Is Before God. No, The Opposite Of Sin Is Faith.

...a Human Being Not Only Can Choose But... He Must Choose... For In This Way God Retains His Honor While At The Same Time Has A Fatherly Concern For Humankind. Though God Has Lowered Himself To Being That Which Can Be Chosen, Yet Each Person Must On His Part Choose. God Is Not Mocked. Therefore The Matter Stands Thus: If A Person Avoids Choosing, This Is The Same As The Presumption Of Choosing The World.

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

My Standpoint Is Armed Neutrality.

Those Who Dream Must Be Awakened, And The Deeper The People Are Who Slumber, Or The Deeper They Slumber, The More Important It Is That They Be Awakened, And The More Powerfully Must They Be Awakened.

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

It Is Easy To See, Though It Scarcely Needs To Be Pointed Out, Since It Is Involved In The Fact That Reason Is Set Aside, That Faith Is Not A Form Of Knowledge; For All Knowledge Is Either A Knowledge Of The Eternal, Excluding The Temporal And Historical As Indifferent, Or It Is Pure Historical Knowledge. No Knowledge Can Have For Its Object The Absurdity That The Eternal Is The Historical.

Every Mental Act Is Composed Of Doubt And Belief, But It Is Belief That Is The Positive, It Is Belief That Sustains Thought And Holds The World Together.

There Are Two Kinds Of Geniuses. The Characteristic Of The One Is Roaring, But The Lightning Is Meagre And Rarely Strikes; The Other Kind Is Characterized By Reflection By Which It Constrains Itself Or Restrains The Roaring. But The Lightning Is All The More Intense; With The Speed And Sureness Of Lightning It Hits The Selected Particular Points - And Is Fatal.

At One Time My Only Wish Was To Be A Police Official. It Seemed To Me To Be An Occupation For My Sleepless Intriguing Mind. I Had The Idea That There, Among Criminals, Were People To Fight: Clever, Vigorous, Crafty Fellows. Later I Realized That It Was Good That I Did Not Become One, For Most Police Cases Involve Misery And Wretchedness-not Crimes And Scandals.

Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Man.

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

The Thing That Cowardice Fears Most Is Decision

Comparison Is The Most Dangerous Acquaintance Love Can Make.

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

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.

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

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.

Genius Never Desires What Does Not Exist.

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 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'.

A Man May Perform Astonishing Feats And Comprehend A Vast Amount Of Knowledge, And Yet Have No Understanding Of Himself. But Suffering Directs A Man To Look Within. If It Succeeds, Then There, Within Him, Is The Beginning Of His Learning.

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

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

Genius, Like A Thunderstorm, Comes Up Against The Wind.

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

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).

People Settle For A Level Of Despair They Can Tolerate And Call It Happiness.

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.

Face The Facts Of Being What You Are, For That Is What Changes What You Are.

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.

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

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

Take A Book, The Poorest One Written, But Read It With The Passion That It Is The Only Book You Will Read. Ultimately, You Will Read Everything Out Of It, That Is, As Much As There Was In Yourself, And You Could Never Get More Out Of Reading, Even If You Read The Best Of Books.

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

That Which Is Truly Human No Generation Learns From The One Before It. No Generation Learns From Another How To Love. No Generation Has A Shorter Task Assigned To It Except Insofar As The Previous Generation Shirked Its Task And Deluded Itself.

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

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

You Will Regret

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.

What Labels Me, Negates Me.

Human Justice Is Very Prolix, And Yet At Times Quite Mediocre; Divine Justice Is More Concise And Needs No Information From The Prosecution, No Legal Papers, No Interrogation Of Witnesses, But Makes The Guilty One His Own Informer And Helps Him With Eternity's Memory.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

How Could It Occur To Anyone To Demonstrate That God Exists Unless One Has Already Allowed Himself To Ignore Him? A King's Existence Is Demonstrated By Way Of Subjection And Submissiveness. Do You Want To Try And Demonstrate That The King Exists? Will You Do So By Offering A String Of Proofs, A Series Of Arguments? No. If You Are Serious, You Will Demonstrate The King's Existence By Your Submission, By The Way You Live. And So It Is With Demonstrating God's Existence. It Is Accomplished Not By Proofs But By Worship. Any Other Way Is But A Thinker's Pious Bungling.

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

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.

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.

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.

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