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

-Soren Kierkegaard

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If There Were No

Soren Kierkegaard

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

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Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Human Being. Many In Every Generation May Not Come That Far, But None Comes Further.

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.

There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow

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.

How Absurd Men Are! They Never Use The Liberties They Have, They Demand Those They Do Not Have. They Have Freedom Of Thought, They Demand Freedom Of Speech.

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.

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

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

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. . . .

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

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

...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.

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

He Who Does Not Know How To Encircle A Girl So That She Loses Sight Of Everything He Does Not Want Her To See, He Who Does Not Know How To Poetize Himself Into A Girl So That It Is From Her That Everything Proceeds As He Wants It-he Is And Remains A Bungler

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

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.

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

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.

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

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

...why Bother Remembering A Past That Cannot Be Made Into A Present?

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.

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!

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.

...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.

This Is What Is Sad When One Contemplates Human Life, That So Many Live Out Their Lives In Quiet Lostness...they Live, As It Were, Away From Themselves And Vanish Like Shadows. Their Immortal Souls Are Blown Away, And They Are Not Disquieted By The Question Of Its Immortality, Because They Are Already Disintegrated Before They Die.

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

My Melancholy Is The Most Faithful Sweetheart I Have Had.

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

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

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

...knowing God Is The Condition For The Sanctification Of A Human Being By God's Assistance And According To His Intention. Wherever God Is, There He Is Always Creating... He Wants To Create A New Human Being. To Need God Is To Become New. And To Know God Is The Crucial Thing.

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.

Sleeping Is The Height Of Genius

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

Thought Provoking

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?

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

I Have Just Now Come From A Party Where I Was Its Life And Soul; Witticisms Streamed From My Lips, Everyone Laughed And Admired Me, But I Went Away - Yes, The Dash Should Be As Long As The Radius Of The Earth's Orbit ——————————— And Wanted To Shoot Myself.

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.

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

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

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

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

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

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 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.

In A Mathematical Proposition, For Example, The Objectivity Is Given, But Therefore Its Truth Is Also An Indifferent Truth.

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.

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

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

Genius Never Desires What Does Not Exist.

Love Believes All Things And Yet Is Never Deceived.

I Have Never Fought In Such A Way As To Say: I Am The True Christian, Others Are Not Christians.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

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.

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.

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

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

Only One Deception Is Possible In The Infinite Sense, Self-deception.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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

Take Away Paradox From The Thinker And You Have A Professor.

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

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

...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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

It Is Perfectly True, As Philosophers Say, That Life Must Be Understood Backwards. But They Forget The Other Proposition, That It Must Be Lived Forwards.

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

May New Sufferings Torment Your Soul.

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

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 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 God That Can Be Named Is Not God.

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.

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.

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.

Pleasure Disappoints; Possibility Never.

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

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.

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.

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.

Truth Always Rests With The Minority, And The Minority Is Always Stronger Than The Majority, Because The Minority Is Generally Formed By Those Who Really Have An Opinion, While The Strength Of A Majority Is Illusory, Formed By The Gangs Who Have No Opinion - And Who, Therefore, In The Next Instant (when It Is Evident That The Minority Is The Stronger) Assume Its Opinion ... While Truth Again Reverts To A New Minority.

Without Risk, Faith Is An Impossibility.

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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.

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.

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

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.

Our Life Always Expresses The Result Of Our Dominant Thoughts.

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

It Is Not A Gain That Guilt Should Be Wholly Forgotten. On The Contrary, It Is Loss And Perdition. But It Is A Gain To Win An Inner Intensity Of Heart Through A Deeper And Deeper Inner Sorrowing Over Guilt.

For The Sadness In Legitimate Humour Consists In The Fact That Honestly And Without Deceit It Reflects In A Purely Human Way Upon What It Is To Be A Child.

Leap Of Faith – Yes, But Only After Reflection

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

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

The 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.

Man Is Spirit. But What Is Spirit? Spirit Is The Self. But What Is The Self? The Self Is A Relation Which Relates Itself To Itself.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Great Trick With A Woman Is To Get Rid Of Her While She Think's She's Rid Of You.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

... 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!

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

One Should Be An Enigma Not Just To Others But To Oneself Too. I Study Myself. When I'm Tired Of That I Light A Cigar To Pass The Time, And Think: God Only Knows What The Good Lord Really Meant With Me, Or What He Meant To Make Of Me.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Of All Ridiculous Things The Most Ridiculous Seems To Me, To Be Busy — To Be A Man Who Is Brisk About His Food And His Work. Therefore, Whenever I See A Fly Settling, In The Decisive Moment, On The Nose Of Such A Person Of Affairs; Or If He Is Spattered With Mud From A Carriage Which Drives Past Him In Still Greater Haste; Or The Drawbridge Opens Up Before Him; Or A Tile Falls Down And Knocks Him Dead, Then I Laugh Heartily.

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

What Labels Me, Negates Me.

Christ Was Crucified Because He Would Have Nothing To Do With The Crowd (even Though He Addressed Himself To All). He Did Not Want To Form A Party, An Interest Group, A Mass Movement, But Wanted To Be What He Was, The Truth, Which Is Related To The Single Individual. Therefore Everyone Who Will Genuinely Serve The Truth Is By That Very Fact A Martyr. To Win A Crowd Is No Art; For That Only Untruth Is Needed, Nonsense, And A Little Knowledge Of Human Passions. But No Witness To The Truth Dares To Get Involved With The Crowd.

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

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.

What A Misfortune To Be A Woman! And Yet, The Worst Misfortune Is Not To Understand What A Misfortune It Is.

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

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?

My Tactics Were, By God's Aid, To Employ Every Means To Make It Clear What The Requirement Of Christianity Truly Is.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Extreme Rarity Of Transitional Forms In The Fossil Record Persists As The Trade Secret Of Paleontology.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Questions And Answers

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

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