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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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If Someone Who Wanted

Soren Kierkegaard

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

... The More One Needs God The More Perfect He Is. To Need God Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of But Is Perfection Itself. It Is The Saddest Thing In The World If A Human Being Goes Through Life Without Discovering That He Needs God!

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.

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

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

People Try To Persuade Us That The Objections Against Christianity Spring From Doubt. That Is A Complete Misunderstanding. The Objections Against Christianity Spring From Insubordination, The Dislike Of Obedience, Rebellion Against All Authority. As A Result, People Have Hitherto Been Beating The Air In Their Struggle Against Objections, Because They Have Fought Intellectually With Doubt Instead Of Fighting Morally With Rebellion.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.

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

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.

During The First Period Of Our Lives The Greatest Danger Is Not To Take The Risk. When Once The Risk Has Been Taken, Then The Greatest Danger Is To Risk Too Much. By Not Risking At First One Turns Aside And Serves Trivialities; In The Second Case, By Risking Too Much, One Turns Aside To The Fantastic And Perhaps To Presumption.

...there Is One Thing That All Satan's Cunning And All The Snares Of Temptation Cannot Take By Surprise - An Undivided Will.

Without Risk, Faith Is An Impossibility.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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

...christ Did Not Appoint Professors, But Followers. If Christianity ... Is Not Reduplicated In The Life Of The Person Expounding It, Then He Does Not Expound Christianity, For Christianity Is A Message About Living And Can Only Be Expounded By Being Realized In Men's Lives.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

For Love Is Exultant When It Unites Equals, But It Is Triumphant When It Makes That Which Was Unequal Equal In Love.

Adversity Not Only Draws People Together, But Brings Forth That Beautiful Inward Friendship.

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.

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.

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.

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

What Labels Me, Negates Me.

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

At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Wanted God's Ideas About What Was Best For You To Coincide With Your Ideas, But You Also Wanted Him To Be The Almighty Creator Of Heaven And Earth So That He Could Properly Fulfill Your Wish. And Yet, If He Were To Share Your Ideas, He Would Cease To Be The Almighty Father.

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!

The Greatest Hazard Of All, Losing One’s Self, Can Occur Very Quietly In The World, As If It Were Nothing At All. No Other Loss Can Occur So Quietly; Any Other Loss - An Arm, A Leg, Five Dollars, A Wife, Etc. - Is Sure To Be Noticed.

A Good Decision Is Our Will To Do Everything We Can Within Our Power. It Means To Serve God With All We've Got, Be It Little Or Much. Every Person Can Do That.

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

Prayer Does Not Change God, But It Changes Him Who Prays.

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

Our Age Is Essentially One Of Understanding And Reflection, Without Passion, Momentarily Bursting Into Enthusiasm And Shrewdly Relapsing Into Repose.

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

My Standpoint Is Armed Neutrality.

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

Future Is Everything That Past Has Forgotten.

...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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.

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.

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).

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

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 Truly Simple Way Of Presenting Christianity Is To Do It.

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.

...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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Difference Between An Admirer And A Follower Still Remains, No Matter Where You Are. The Admirer Never Makes Any True Sacrifices. He Always Plays It Safe. Though In Words, Phrases, Songs, He Is Inexhaustible About How Highly He Prizes Christ, He Renounces Nothing, Gives Up Nothing, Will Not Reconstruct His Life, Will Not Be What He Admires, And Will Not Let His Life Express What It Is He Supposedly Admires.

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

The Most Terrible Fight Is Not When There Is One Opinion Against Another, The Most Terrible Is When Two Men Say The Same Thing -- And Fight About The Interpretation, And This Interpretation Involves A Difference Of Quality.

I Feel As If I Were A Piece In A Game Of Chess, When My Opponent Says Of It: That Piece Cannot Be Moved.

You Live Life Looking Forward, You Understand Life Looking Backward.

Looking Forward

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.

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

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

You Should Therefore Say: Alone In One's Boat, Alone With One's Care, Alone With One's Despair, Which One Is Craven Enough To Want Rather To Keep Than Submit To The Pain Of Being Healed.

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

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.

Wherever There Is A Crowd There Is Untruth.

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.

Sleeping Is The Height Of Genius

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.

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

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.

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?

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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

Hope Is Passion For What Is Possible.

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.

There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow

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

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

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

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

Intelligence Has Got The Upper Hand To Such An Extent That It Transforms The Real Task Into An Unreal Trick And Reality Into A Play.

It Is Not The Path Which Is The Difficulty; Rather, It Is The Difficulty Which Is The Path.

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

Knowledge Is An Attitude, A Passion, Actually An Illicit Attitude. For The Compulsion To Know Is Like Dipsomania, Erotomania, And Homicidal Mania, In Producing A Character That Is Out Of Balance. It Is Not At All That The Scientist Goes After The Truth.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where Unclarity Resides, There Is Temptation, And There It Proves Only Too Easily The Stronger. Wherever There Is Ambiguity, Wherever There Is Wavering, There Is Disobedience Down At The Bottom.

...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.

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.

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

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

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

To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.

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

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.

The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.

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

It Is Quite True What Philosophy Says: That Life Must Be Understood Backwards. But That Makes One Forget The Other Saying: That It Must Be Lived—forwards. The More One Ponders This, The More It Comes To Mean That Life In The Temporal Existence Never Becomes Quite Intelligible, Precisely Because At No Moment Can I Find Complete Quiet To Take The Backward- Looking Position.

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

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

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.

It Takes Moral Courage To Grieve; It Requires Religious Courage To Rejoice.

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility

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.

What Is Existence For But To Be Laughed At If Men In Their Twenties Have Already Attained The Utmost?

To The Christian, Love Is The Works Of Love. To Say That Love Is A Feeling Or Anything Of The Kind Is An Unchristian Conception Of Love. That Is The Aesthetic Definition And Therefore Fits The Erotic And Everything Of That Nature. But To The Christian Love Is The Works Of Love. Christ's Love Was Not An Inner Feeling, A Full Heart And What Not, It Was The Work Of Love Which Was His Life.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Adversity Draws Men Together And Produces Beauty And Harmony In Life's Relationships, Just As The Cold Of Winter Produces Ice-flowers On The Window-panes, Which Vanish With The Warmth.

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.

...my Soul Always Reverts To The Old Testament And To Shakespeare. There At Least One Feels That It's Human Beings Talking. There People Hate, People Love, People Murder Their Enemy And Curse His Descendants Through All Generations, There People Sin.

On The Secretly Blushing Cheek Is Reflected The Glow Of The Heart

Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Be That Self Which One Truly Is.

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.

Prayer Is A Silent Surrendering Of Everything To God.

I Am So Stupid That I Cannot Understand Philosophy; The Antithesis Of This Is That Philosophy Is So Clever That It Cannot Comprehend My Stupidity. These Antitheses Are Mediated In A Higher Unity; In Our Common Stupidity.

...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.

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.

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.

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."

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 Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

Job Endured Everything - Until His Friends Came To Comfort Him, Then He Grew Impatient.

The Question Of Immortality Is Of Its Nature Not A Scholarly Question. It Is A Question Welling Up From The Interior Which The Subject Must Put To Itself As It Becomes Conscious Of Itself.

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.

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?

I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.

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.

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

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 One Suffers, The More, I Believe, Has One A Sense For The Comic. It Is Only By The Deepest Suffering That One Acquires True Authority In The Use Of The Comic, An Authority Which By One Word Transforms As By Magic The Reasonable Creature One Calls Man Into A Caricature.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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.

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

To Be A Teacher Does Not Mean Simply To Affirm That Such A Thing Is So, Or To Deliver A Lecture, Etc.

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

...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.

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

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