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

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

Understanding the Quote: "our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily..."

This quote by Soren Kierkegaard reflects deeply on the theme of passion. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Passion, Reflection, Understanding, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Soren Kierkegaard interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard is celebrated for insightful thoughts on passion and reflection. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Passion
Reflection
Understanding
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There Is No Greater Evil One Can Suffer Than To Hate Reasonable Discourse.
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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.
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It Seems Essential, In Relationships And All Tasks, That We Concentrate Only On What Is Most Significant And Important.
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A Poet Is Not An Apostle; He Drives Out Devils Only By The Power Of The Devil.
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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.
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The Person Who Praises God Is On The Tracks Of Justice.
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People Understand Me So Poorly That They Don't Even Understand My Complaint About Them Not Understanding Me.
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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.
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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.
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... All Comparisons Injure.
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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.
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Human Relations Are Like The Irregular Verbs In A Number Of Languages Where Nearly All Verbs Are Irregular.
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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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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.
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The Extreme Rarity Of Transitional Forms In The Fossil Record Persists As The Trade Secret Of Paleontology.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What The Philosophers Have To Say About Reality Is Often As Disappointing As A Sign You See In A Shop Window, Which Reads Pressing Done Here. If You Brought Your Clothes In To Be Pressed, You Would Be Fooled: For The Sign Is Only For Sale.
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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.
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To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.
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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.
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This, Then, Is The Ultimate Paradox Of Thought: To Want To Discover Something That Thought Itself Cannot Think.
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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.
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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.
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The Highest Of All Is Not To Understand The Highest But To Act Upon It.
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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.
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A Man Who As A Physical Being Is Always Turned Toward The Outside, Thinking That His Happiness Lies Outside Him, Finally Turns Inward And Discovers That The Source Is Within Him.
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Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk.
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There Is Something Almost Cruel About The Christian's Being Placed In A World Which In Every Way Wants To Pressure Him To Do The Opposite Of What God Bids Him To Do.
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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.
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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.
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For Love Is Exultant When It Unites Equals, But It Is Triumphant When It Makes That Which Was Unequal Equal In Love.
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Marriage Brings One Into Fatal Connection With Custom And Tradition, And Traditions And Customs Are Like The Wind And Weather, Altogether Incalculable.
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What Labels Me, Negates Me.
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If The Ethical - That Is, Social Morality- Is The Highest ... Then No Categories Are Needed Other Than The Greek Philosophical Categories.
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Job Endured Everything - Until His Friends Came To Comfort Him, Then He Grew Impatient.
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Shows Itself In The Notion That What May Be Objectively True May In The Mouth Of Certain People Become False.
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And This Is One Of The Most Crucial Definitions For The Whole Of Christianity; That The Opposite Of Sin Is Not Virtue But Faith.
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...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.
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The Resolving Of The Ethical, Is Freedom; The Negative Resolution Also Has This, But The Freedom, Blank And Bare, Is As If Tongue-tied, Hard To Express, And Generally Has Something Hard In Its Nature. Falling In Love, However, Promptly Sets It To Music, Even If This Composition Contains A Very Difficult Passage.
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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.
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... 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!
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It Is More Blessed To Give Than To Receive, But Then It Is Also More Blessed To Be Able To Do Without Than To Have To Have.
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Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.
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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.
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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.
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For He Who Loves God Without Faith Reflects On Himself, While The Person Who Loves God In Faith Reflects On God.
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What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.
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What If Everything In The World Were A Misunderstanding, What If Laughter Were Really Tears?
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Men Are Not On Such Intimate Terms With The Sublime That They Really Can Believe In It
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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.
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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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The Human Race In The Course Of Time Has Taken The Liberty Of Softening And Softening Christianity Until At Last We Have Contrived To Make It Exactly The Opposite Of What It Is In The New Testament.
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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.
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To Dare Is To Lose One's Footing Momentarily. Not To Dare Is To Lose Oneself.
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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.
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Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Man.
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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.
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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.
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...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.
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Pleasure Disappoints; Possibility Never.
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Possibility
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A 'no' Does Not Hide Anything, But A 'yes' Very Easily Becomes A Deception.
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Doe
The Most Painful State Of Being Is Remembering The Future, Particularly The One You'll Never Have.
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Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards; But It Must Be Lived Forwards.
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Life
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This Age Will Die Not As A Result Of Some Evil, But From A Lack Of Passion.
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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.
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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.
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Freedom's Possibility Is Not The Ability To Choose The Good Or The Evil. The Possibility Is To Be Able.
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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.
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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.
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Far From Idleness Being The Root Of All Evil, It Is Rather The Only True Good.
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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.
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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.
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Truth Is Not Something You Can Appropriate Easily And Quickly. You Certainly Cannot Sleep Or Dream Yourself To The Truth. No, You Must Be Tried, Do Battle, And Suffer If You Are To Acquire The Truth For Yourself. It Is A Sheer Illusion To Think That In Relation To The Truth There Is An Abridgement, A Short Cut That Dispenses With The Necessity For Struggling For It.
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To Be A Teacher Does Not Mean Simply To Affirm That Such A Thing Is So, Or To Deliver A Lecture, Etc.
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I Begin With The Principle That All Men Are Bores. Surely No One Will Prove Himself So Great A Bore As To Contradict Me In This.
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Boredom
It's Better To Get Lost In The Passion Than To Lose The Passion
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Sin Is In Itself Separation From The Good, But Despair Over Sin Is Separation A Second Time.
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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.
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Men
People
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.
Reform
Doe
Matter
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.
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Prayer
Long
Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing.
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Focus
Purity
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.
Believe
Long Ago
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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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Ignorance
Expression
...there Is One Thing That All Satan's Cunning And All The Snares Of Temptation Cannot Take By Surprise - An Undivided Will.
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Temptation
Satan
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.
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Men
Gambling
Ulysses Was Not Comely, But He Was Eloquent, Yet He Fired Two Goddesses Of The Sea With Love
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Sea
Two
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?
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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.
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Solitude
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.
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Take It And Return It: The Kiss Of Love.
Kissing
Return
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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).
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Speech
Love Is All, It Gives All, And It Takes All.
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Where There Are Two People, There Is Untruth.
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...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.
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Creating
Knowing
Be That Self Which One Truly Is.
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Self
Individuality
Language Has Time As Its Element; All Other Media Have Space As Their Element.
Media
Space
Elements
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.
Hero
Judging
World
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.
Distance
Taken
Thinking
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.
Truth
Desire
Majority
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?
Thinking
Midnight
Littles
I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.
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.
Taken
Risk
Too Much
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.
Exercise
Men
Thinking
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.
Dream
People
Important
The God That Can Be Named Is Not God.
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.
Book
Reading
Passion
Whoever Has Learned To Be Anxious In The Right Way Has Learned The Ultimate.
Way
Anxious
Right Way
Pleasure Disappoints, Possibility Never. And What Wine Is So Sparkling, Who So Fragrant, What So Intoxicating, As Possibility.
Wine
Pleasure
Possibility
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.
Love
Certain
Mistaken
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.
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Inspiring
Wisdom
To Be A Teacher In The Right Sense Is To Be A Learner. I Am Not A Teacher, Only A Fellow Student.
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Students
Learners
At One Time My Only Wish Was To Be A Police Official. It Seemed To Me To Be An Occupation For My Sleepless Intriguing Mind. I Had The Idea That There, Among Criminals, Were People To Fight: Clever, Vigorous, Crafty Fellows. Later I Realized That It Was Good That I Did Not Become One, For Most Police Cases Involve Misery And Wretchedness-not Crimes And Scandals.
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Fighting
Ideas
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.
Lying
Exercise
Should Have
Hope Is Passion For What Is Possible.
Hope
Passion
Do It Or Don't Do It - You Will Regret Both.
Regret
You Will Regret
If A Man Cannot Forget, He Will Never Amount To Much.
Men
Forget
Ifs
The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.
Lying
Appropriation
I Do Not Lack The Courage To Think A Thought Whole.
Thinking
Whole
Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.
Subjectivity
Irony
Qualifications
The Function Of Prayer Is Not To Influence God, But Rather To Change The Nature Of The One Who Prays.
Change
God
Faith
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!
Doors
Order
Community
I Stick My Finger Into Existence.. It Smells Of Nothing. Where Am I? Who Am I? What Is This Thing Called The World? What Does This Word Mean?
Mean
Smell
Doe
When All Combine In Every Way To Make Everything Easier, People Will Want Difficulty. I Conceived It As My Task To Make Difficulties Everywhere.
People
Tasks
Want
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.
Love
Heartbreak
Cheating
Whoever Has The World's Treasures Has Them No Matter How He Got Them. In The World Of The Spirit It Is Otherwise.
Faith
World
Treasure
Genius, Like A Thunderstorm, Comes Up Against The Wind.
Wind
Genius
Thunderstorm
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
Beautiful
Sky
Differences
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.
Life
Philosophy
Thinking
It Takes Moral Courage To Grieve; It Requires Religious Courage To Rejoice.
Religious
Courage
Grieving
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.
Choices
Doe
Tasks
...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.
Christian
Offering
Giving
...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.
Christian
Thinking
World And Love
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.
Life
Spiritual
Eye
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.
Mean
Atheism
Way
Which Is More Difficult, To Awaken One Who Sleeps Or To Awaken One Who, Awake, Dreams That He Is Awake?
Dream
Sleep
Difficult
There Can Be No Faith Without Risk.
Risk
Life Has Its Own Hidden Forces Which You Can Only Discover By Living.
Life
Life Lesson
Force
Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.
Love
Sweet
Doe
To Have Faith Is Precisely To Lose One's Mind So As To Win God.
Winning
Mind
Have Faith
Human Justice Is Very Prolix, And Yet At Times Quite Mediocre; Divine Justice Is More Concise And Needs No Information From The Prosecution, No Legal Papers, No Interrogation Of Witnesses, But Makes The Guilty One His Own Informer And Helps Him With Eternity's Memory.
Memories
Divine Justice
Paper
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.
Death
Struggle
Men
At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.
Lying
Enmity
Indifference
Had I To Carve An Inscription On My Tombstone I Would Ask For None Other Than "the Individual."
Tombstone
Individuality
Inscriptions
Christ Has Not Only Spoken To Us By His Life But Has Also Spoken For Us By His Death.
Easter
Christ
Funny Easter
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.
Art
Passion
Winning
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.
Christian
Temptation
Stronger
My Scholarly Expectation Is Then That I May Succeed In Becoming Clever In Philosophy In Spite Of My Stupidity.
Clever
Philosophy
Expectations
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.
Past
Long
Individual
The Present Generation, Wearied By Its Chimerical Efforts, Relapses Into Complete Indolence. Its Condition Is That Of A Man Who Has Only Fallen Asleep Towards Morning: First Of All Come Great Dreams, Then A Feeling Of Laziness, And Finally A Witty Or Clever Excuse For Remaining In Bed.
Dream
Witty
Morning
The More Men Believe An Idea To Be True The Greater The Likelihood That The Idea Is Mistaken. Those Who Are Right Usually Stand Alone.
Believe
Men
Ideas
During The First Period Of A Man's Life The Greatest Danger Is Not To Take The Risk.
Inspirational
Men
Heartache
A Possibility Is A Hint From God. One Must Follow It.
Vision
Hints
Possibility
Trouble Is The Common Denominator Of Living. It Is The Great Equalizer.
Adversity
Common
Conflict
It Is (to Describe It Figuratively) As If An Author Were To Make A Slip Of The Pen, And As If This Clerical Error Became Conscious Of Being Such. Perhaps This Was No Error But In A Far Higher Sense Was An Essential Part Of The Whole Exposition. It Is, Then, As If This Clerical Error Were To Revolt Against The Author, Out Of Hatred For Him, Were To Forbid Him To Correct It, And Were To Say, "no, I Will Not Be Erased, I Will Stand As A Witness Against Thee, That Thou Art A Very Poor Writer."
Art
Errors
Hatred
As The Arrow, Loosed From The Bow By The Hand Of The Practiced Archer, Does Not Rest Till It Has Reached The Mark, So Men Pass From God To God. He Is The Mark For Which They Have Been Created, And They Do Not Rest Till They Find Their Rest In Him.
Archer
Men
Hands
The Object Of (christian) Faith Is Not The Teaching But The Teacher.
Christian
Teacher
Teaching
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.
Mean
Reflection
Evil
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.
Life
Hope
Sick
Once You Are Born In This World You’re Old Enough To Die.
World
Enough
Born
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.
Believe
People
Fool
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.
Mean
Opposites
Views
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?
Taken
Mean
Thinking
God Does Not Think; He Creates. He Does Not Exist; He Is Eternal.
Fear
Thinking
Atheism
...why Bother Remembering A Past That Cannot Be Made Into A Present?
Past
Remember
Made
Out Of Love, God Becomes Man. He Says: 'see, Here Is What It Is To Be A Human Being'.
Men
God Love
Humans
There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow
Sorrow
Comfort
Our Age Is Essentially One Of Understanding And Reflection, Without Passion, Momentarily Bursting Into Enthusiasm And Shrewdly Relapsing Into Repose.
Passion
Reflection
Understanding
It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion
Passion
Impossible
What I Really Need Is To Get Clear About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Must Precede Every Act. What Matters Is To Find A Purpose, To See What It Really Is That God Wills That I Shall Do; 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.
What Matters
Ideas
Needs
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.
Order
Special
Purpose
Spirit Is The Third, Yet In Such A Way That One Can Speak Of A Synthesis Only When The Spirit Is Posited.
Way
Synthesis
Spirit
In A Mathematical Proposition, For Example, The Objectivity Is Given, But Therefore Its Truth Is Also An Indifferent Truth.
Science
Objectivity
Example
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?
Real
Intelligent
Two
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.
Freedom
Men
Liberty
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.
Life
Loneliness
Simple
Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Human Being. Many In Every Generation May Not Come That Far, But None Comes Further.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
The Unhappy Person Is Never Present To Themself Because They Always Live In The Past Or The Future.
Past
Unhappy Person
Persons
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.
Faith
Christian
Religious
The Presence Of Irony Does Not Necessarily Mean That The Earnestness Is Excluded. Only Assistant Professors Assume That.
Mean
Doe
Assistants
All Essential Knowledge Relates To Existence, Or Only Such Knowledge As Has An Essential Relationship To Existence Is Essential Knowledge.
Essentials
Existence
Relate
Genius Never Desires What Does Not Exist.
Desire
Doe
Genius
Affliction Is Able To Drown Out Every Earthly Voice. . . But The Voice Of Eternity Within A Person It Cannot Drown.
Adversity
Voice
Affliction
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.
Men
Ideas
Differences
Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.
Tense
Present Tense
Preparation For Becoming Attentive To Christianity Does Not Consist In Reading Many Books ... But In Fuller Immersion In Existence.
Book
Reading
Preparation
In The Christianity Of Christendom The Cross Has Become Something Like The Child’s Hobby-horse And Trumpet.
Horse
Children
Hobbies
We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction
Destruction
Ifs
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.
Fall
Sin
Dread
Certainty... Lurks At The Door Of Faith And Threatens To Devour It.
Doors
Certainty
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