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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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Sin Is: Before God,

Soren Kierkegaard

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

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I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.

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

It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion

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Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Man.

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.

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

...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.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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

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Falling In Love

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.

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.

You Train Yourself In The Art Of Being Mysterious To Everyone. My Dear Friend! What If There Were No One, Who Cared About Guessing Your Riddle, What Pleasure Would You Then Take In It?

No Time Of Life Is So Beautiful As The Early Days Of Love, When With Every Meeting, Every Glance, One Fetches Something New Home To Rejoice Over.

If I Had A Humble Spirit In My Service Who, When I Asked For A Glass Of Water, Brought Me The World's Costliest Wines Blended In A Chalice, I Should Dismiss Him, In Order To Teach Him That My Pleasure Consists, Not In What I Enjoy, But In Having My Own Way.

The Self-assured Believer Is A Greater Sinner In The Eyes Of God Than The Troubled Disbeliever.

The Thing That Cowardice Fears Most Is Decision

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?

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

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.

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?

Choose To Be Who You Are. . . The Individual Who Would Become A Person Must At Some Point Take Over His Entire Being - Must, That Is, Choose Herself.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

It Is Human Self-renunciation When A Man Denies Himself And The World Opens Up To Him. But It Is Christian Self-renunciation When He Denies Himself And, Because The World Precisely For This Shuts Itself Up To Him, He Must As One Thrust Out By The World Seek God's Confidence. The Double-danger Lies Precisely In Meeting Opposition There Where He Had Expected To Find Support, And He Has To Turn About Twice; Whereas The Merely Human Self-resignation Turns Once.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Just As In The Great Moment Of Resignation One Does Not Mediate But Chooses, Now The Task Is To Gain Proficiency In Repeating The Impassioned Choice And, Existing, To Express It In Existence.

The More People Who Believe Something, The More Apt It Is To Be Wrong. The Person Who's Right Often Has To Stand Alone.

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

Love Is The Expression Of The One Who Loves, Not Of The One Who Is Loved. Those Who Think They Can Love Only The People They Prefer Do Not Love At All. Love Discovers Truths About Individuals That Others Cannot See

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

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

Nowadays Not Even A Suicide Kills Himself In Desperation. Before Taking The Step He Deliberates So Long And So Carefully That He Literally Chokes With Thought. It Is Even Questionable Whether He Ought To Be Called A Suicide, Since It Is Really Thought Which Takes His Life. He Does Not Die With Deliberation But From Deliberation.

Sleeping Is The Height Of Genius

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

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.

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.

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

How Could It Occur To Anyone To Demonstrate That God Exists Unless One Has Already Allowed Himself To Ignore Him? A King's Existence Is Demonstrated By Way Of Subjection And Submissiveness. Do You Want To Try And Demonstrate That The King Exists? Will You Do So By Offering A String Of Proofs, A Series Of Arguments? No. If You Are Serious, You Will Demonstrate The King's Existence By Your Submission, By The Way You Live. And So It Is With Demonstrating God's Existence. It Is Accomplished Not By Proofs But By Worship. Any Other Way Is But A Thinker's Pious Bungling.

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

Pleasure Disappoints; Possibility Never.

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

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.

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

Critical Thinking

I Am Convinced That God Is Love, This Thought Has For Me A Primitive Lyrical Validity. When It Is Present To Me, I Am Unspeakably Blissful, When It Is Absent, I Long For It More Vehemently Than Does The Lover For His Object.

I Have Only One Friend, And That Is Echo. Why Is It My Friend? Because I Love My Sorrow, And Echo Does Not Take It Away From Me. I Have Only One Confidant, And That Is The Silence Of Night. Why Is It My Confidant? Because It Remains Silent.

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 Greatest Thing Each Person Can Do Is To Give Himself To God Utterly And Unconditionally - Weaknesses, Fears, And All. For God Loves Obedience More Than Good Intentions Or Second-best Offerings, Which Are All Too Often Made Under The Guise Of Weakness.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

...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.

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

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

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

God Creates Out Of Nothing. Wonderful You Say. Yes, To Be Sure, But He Does What Is Still More Wonderful: He Makes Saints Out Of Sinners.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

If Someone Who Wanted To Learn To Dance Were To Say: For Centuries, One Generation After The Other Has Learned The Positions, And It Is High Time That I Take Advantage Of This And Promptly Begin With The Quadrille--people Would Presumably Laugh A Little At Him, But In The World Of Spirit This Is Very Plausible. What, Then, Is Education? I Believed It Is The Course The Individual Goes Through In Order To Catch Up With Himself, And The Person Who Will Not Go Through This Course Is Not Much Helped By Being Born In The Most Enlightened Age.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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

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

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

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.

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

Questions And Answers

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

Looking Forward

Trouble Is The Common Denominator Of Living. It Is The Great Equalizer.

Absolute Passion Cannot Be Understood By A Third Party.

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.

As I Stood Alone And Forsaken, And The Power Of The Sea And The Battle Of The Elements Reminded Me Of My Own Nothingness, And On The Other Hand, The Sure Flight Of The Birds Recalled The Words Spoken By Christ: Not A Sparrow Shall Fall On The Ground Without Your Father: Then, All At Once, I Felt How Great And How Small I Was; Then Did Those Two Mighty Forces, Pride And Humility, Happily Unite In Friendship.

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!

. . .the Larger The Crowd, The More Probable That That Which It Praises Is Folly, And The More Improbable That It Is Truth; And The Most Improbable Of All That It Is Any Eternal Truth.

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

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

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.

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

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.

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