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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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One Is Not Unpopular

Soren Kierkegaard

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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.

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Boredom Is The Root Of All Evil - The Despairing Refusal To Be Oneself.

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

The Deepest Form Of Despair Is To Choose To Be Another Than Himself.

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.

Dread Is A Sympathetic Antipathy And An Antipathetic Sympathy.

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

...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.

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.

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

It Belongs To The Imperfection Of Everything Human That Man Can Only Attain His Desire By Passing Through Its Opposite.

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.

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

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.

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

Since Boredom Advances And Boredom Is The Root Of All Evil, No Wonder, Then, That The World Goes Backwards, That Evil Spreads. This Can Be Traced Back To The Very Beginning Of The World. The Gods Were Bored; Therefore They Created Human Beings.

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

The 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.

It Is The Duty Of The Human Understanding To Understand That There Are Things Which It Cannot Understand, And What Those Things Are. Human Understanding Has Vulgarly Occupied Itself With Nothing But Understanding, But If It Would Only Take The Trouble To Understand Itself At The Same Time It Would Simply Have To Posit The Paradox.

Prayer Is A Silent Surrendering Of Everything To God.

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

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

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

Terrible Things

A Poet Is An Unhappy Creature Whose Heart Is Tortured By Deepest Suffering But Whose Lips Are So Formed That When His Sighs And Cries Stream Out Over Them, Their Sound Beomes Like The Sound Of Beautiful Music . . . . And Men Flock About The Poet Saying, Sing For Us Soon Again; That Is To Say, May New Sufferings Torture Your Soul, And May Your Lips Continue To Be Formed As Before.

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

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

When You Open The Door Which You Shut In Order To Pray To God, The First Person You Meet As You Go Out Is Your Neighbour Whom You Shall Love. Wonderful!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Boredom Rests Upon The Nothingness That Winds Its Way Through Existence; Its Giddiness, Like That Which Comes From Gazing Down Into An Infinite Abyss, Is Infinite.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

I Have, I Believe, The Courage To Doubt Everything; I Have, I Believe, The Courage To Fight Against Everything; But I Do Not Have The Courage To Acknowledge Anything, The Courage To Possess, To Own Anything.

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.

Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.

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

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.

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.

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

You Will Regret

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

There Is Nothing Everyone Is So Afraid Of As Being Told How Vastly Much He Is Capable Of. You Are Capable Of - Do You Want To Know? - You Are Capable Of Living In Poverty; You Are Capable Of Standing Almost Any Kind Of Maltreatment, Abuse, Etc. But You Do Not Wish To Know About It, Isn't That So? You Would Be Furious With Him Who Told You So, And Only Call That Person Your Friend Who Bolsters You In Saying: 'no, This I Cannot Bear, This Is Beyond My Strength, Etc.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Comparison Is The Most Dangerous Acquaintance Love Can Make.

My Sorrow Is My Castle.

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.

The Truth Is Lived Before It Is Understood. It Must Be Fought For, Tested, And Appropriated. Truth Is The Way... Anyone Will Easily Understand It If He Just Gives Himself To It.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The God That Can Be Named Is Not God.

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.

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.

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

Take It And Return It: The Kiss Of Love.

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

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. . . .

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

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

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 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

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 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.

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

Most Interesting

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

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.

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

Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.

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.

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.

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

I Must Find A Truth That Is True For Me.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

Dread Is A Womanish Debility In Which Freedom Swoons. Psychologically Speaking, The Fall Into Sin Always Occurs In Impotence. But Dread Is At The Same Time The Most Egotistic Thing.

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.

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.

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

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

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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

Critical Thinking

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

About As Genuine As Tea Made From A Bit Of Paper Which Once Lay In A Drawer Beside Another Piece Of Paper Which Had Been Used To Wrap Up A Few Tea Leaves From Which Tea Had Already Been Made Three Times.

Where Am I? Who Am I? How Did I Come To Be Here? What Is This Thing Called The World? How Did I Come Into The World? Why Was I Not Consulted? And If I Am Compelled To Take Part In It, Where Is The Director? I Want To See Him.

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.

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.

All Moral Elevation Consists First And Foremost Of Being Weaned From The Momentary.

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

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 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.

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

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

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.

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

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.

To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.

Death Is Not Earnest In The Same Way The Eternal Is. To The Earnestness Of Death Belongs Precisely That Remarkable Capacity For Awakening, That Resonance Of A Profound Mockery Which, Detached From The Thought Of The Eternal, Is An Empty And Often Brash Jest, But Together With The Thought Of The Eternal Is Just What It Should Be, Utterly Different From The Insipid Solemness Which Least Of All Captures And Holds A Thought With Tension Like That Of Death.

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.

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?

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

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.

My Life Is Absolutely Meaningless. When I Consider The Different Periods Into Which It Falls, It Seems Like The Word Schnur In The Dictionary, Which Means In The First Place A String, In The Second, A Daughter-in-law. The Only Thing Lacking Is That The Word Schnur Should Mean In The Third Place A Camel, In The Fourth, A Dust-brush.

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.

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

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

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.

Be That Self Which One Truly Is.

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.

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.

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.

... All Comparisons Injure.

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

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.

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

Freedom's Possibility Is Not The Ability To Choose The Good Or The Evil. The Possibility Is To Be Able.

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.

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.

Let Others Mock At You, Oppose You, When You Are Under The Influence Of Any Passion; Do Not Be In The Least Offended With Those Who Mock At Or Oppose You, For They Do You Good; Crucify Your Self-love And Acknowledge The Wrong, The Error Of Your Heart. But Have The Deepest Pity For Those Who Mock At Words And Works Of Faith And Piety, Of Righteousness; For Those Who Oppose The Good Which You Are Doing... God Preserve You - Getting Exasperated At Them.

The 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.

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.

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?

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

The Paradox In Christian Truth Is Invariably Due To The Fact That It Is The Truth That Exists For God. The Standard Of Measure And The End Is Superhuman; And There Is Only One Relationship Possible: Faith.

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

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

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Mstislav Rostropovich

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