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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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It Is Easy To

Soren Kierkegaard

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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.

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

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

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

Sin Is: Before God, Or With The Conception Of God, In Despair Not To Will To Be Oneself, Or In Despair To Will To Be Oneself. Thus Sin Is Intensified Weakness Or Intensified Defiance: Sin Is The Intensification Of Despair. The Emphasis Is On Before God, Or With A Conception Of God; It Is The Conception Of God That Makes Sin Dialectically, Ethically, And Religiously What Lawyers Call 'aggravated' Despair.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

...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.

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 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'.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Critical Thinking

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Without Risk, Faith Is An Impossibility.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Who Is Also Aware Of The Tremendous Risk Involved In Faith - When He Nevertheless Makes The Leap Of Faith - This [is] Subjectivity ... At Its Height.

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

Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.

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

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.

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

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

There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow

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

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

Most Interesting

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

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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

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

I See It All Perfectly; There Are Two Possible Situations - One Can Either Do This Or That. My Honest Opinion And My Friendly Advice Is This: Do It Or Do Not Do It - You Will Regret Both.

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

The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Christendom Has Done Away With Christianity Without Being Quite Aware Of It.

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.

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 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.

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

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

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.

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

I Believe That There Is A Longing In My Soul That Searches The Whole World.

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

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

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

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. . . .

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

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

In Order To Swim One Takes Off All One's Clothes--in Order To Aspire To The Truth One Must Undress In A Far More Inward Sense, Divest Oneself Of All One's Inward Clothes, Of Thoughts, Conceptions, Selfishness Etc., Before One Is Sufficiently Naked.

Old Age Realizes The Dreams Of Youth: Look At Dean Swift; In His Youth He Built An Asylum For The Insane, In His Old Age He Was Himself An Inmate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Melancholy Is The Most Faithful Sweetheart I Have Had.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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!

Prayer Is A Silent Surrendering Of Everything To God.

...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.

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

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

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

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 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.

Happiness Is The Greatest Hiding Place For Despair.

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

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

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

May New Sufferings Torment Your Soul.

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.

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

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.

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.

Death Induces The Sensual Person To Say: Let Us Eat And Drink, Because Tomorrow We Shall Die - But This Is Sensuality's Cowardly Lust For Life, That Contemptible Order Of Things Where One Lives In Order To Eat And Drink Instead Of Eating And Drinking In Order To Live.

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.

The God That Can Be Named Is Not God.

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

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.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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

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.

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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.

Irony Limits, Finitizes, And Circumscribes And Thereby Yields Truth, Actuality, Content; It Disciplines And Punishes And Thereby Yields Balance And Consistency.

Dread Is A Sympathetic Antipathy And An Antipathetic Sympathy.

To Dare Is To Risk Losing Your Foothold For A Moment, Not To Dare Is To Risk Losing Yourself.

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.

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.

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

If You Want To Be Loathsome To God, Just Run With The Herd.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.

Faith Is Holding Onto Uncertainties With Passionate Conviction.

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

...it Is Presumptuous Ridicule Of God If Someone Thinks That Only The Person Who Desires Great Wealth Chooses Mammon. Alas, The Person Who Insists On Having A Penny Without God, Wants To Have A Penny All For Himself. He Thereby Chooses Mammon. A Penny Is Enough, The Choice Is Made, He Has Chosen Mammon; That It Is Little Makes Not The Slightest Difference. The Love Of God Is Hatred Of The World And Love Of The World Hatred Of God.

To Be Lost In Spiritlessness Is The Most Terrible Thing Of All.

Terrible Things

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

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

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.

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

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

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

... All Comparisons Injure.

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

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

A Genius May Perhaps Be A Century Ahead Of His Age And Hence Stands There As A Paradox, But In The End, The Race Will Assimilate What Was Once A Paradox, So It Is No Longer Paradoxical.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

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

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