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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.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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The Most Common Despair

Soren Kierkegaard
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "the most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the..."

This quote by Soren Kierkegaard reflects deeply on the theme of despair. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Despair, Common, Form, 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 despair and common. 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
Despair
Common
Form
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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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No One May Pride Himself At Being More Than An Individual, And No One Despondently Think That He Is Not An Individual.
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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.
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A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.
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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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Do Not Interrupt The Flight Of Your Soul; Do Not Distress What Is Best In You; Do Not Enfeeble Your Spirit With Half Wishes And Half Thoughts. Ask Yourself And Keep On Asking Until You Find The Answer, For One May Have Known Something Many Times, Acknowledged It; One May Have Willed Something Many Times, Attempted It - And Yet, Only The Deep Inner Motion, Only The Heart's Indescribable Emotion, Only That Will Convince You That What You Have Acknowledged Belongs To You, That No Power Can Take It From You - For Only The Truth That Builds Up Is Truth For You.
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If I Am Capable Of Grasping God Objectively, I Do Not Believe, But Precisely Because I Cannot Do This I Must Believe.
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...why Bother Remembering A Past That Cannot Be Made Into A Present?
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To Defend Something Is Always To Discredit It. Let A Man Have A Warehouse Full Of Gold, Let Him Be Willing To Give Away A Ducat To Every One Of The Poor - But Let Him Also Be Stupid Enough To Begin This Charitable Undertaking Of His With A Defense In Which He Offers Three Good Reasons In Justification; And It Will Almost Come To The Point Of People Finding It Doubtful Whether Indeed He Is Doing Something Good. But Now For Christianity. Yes, The Person Who Defends That Has Never Believed In It.
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Truth Is Not Introduced Into The Individual From Without, But Was Within Him All The Time.
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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
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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.
Truth
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To Dare Is To Risk Losing Your Foothold For A Moment, Not To Dare Is To Risk Losing Yourself.
Risk
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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!
Gratitude
Grateful
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Who Am I? How Did I Come Into The World? Why Was I Not Consulted?
Questions And Answers
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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
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The Unhappy Person Is Never Present To Themself Because They Always Live In The Past Or The Future.
Past
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A Poet Is Not An Apostle; He Drives Out Devils Only By The Power Of The Devil.
Devil
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Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing.
Heart
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The Only Analogy I Have Before Me Is Socrates. My Task Is A Socratic Task, To Revise The Definition Of What It Is To Be A Christian. For My Part I Do Not Call Myself A "christian" (thus Keeping The Ideal Free), But I Am Able To Make It Evident That The Others Are Still Less Than I.
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If A Man Cannot Forget, He Will Never Amount To Much.
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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.
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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.
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I Have Only One Confidant, And That Is The Silence Of Night.
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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.
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One Must Not Think Slightingly Of The Paradoxical…for The Paradox Is The Source Of The Thinker’s Passion, And The Thinker Without A Paradox Is Like A Lover Without Feeling: A Paltry Mediocrity.
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I Am So Stupid That I Cannot Understand Philosophy; The Antithesis Of This Is That Philosophy Is So Clever That It Cannot Comprehend My Stupidity. These Antitheses Are Mediated In A Higher Unity; In Our Common Stupidity.
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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.
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The Task Must Be Made Difficult, For Only The Difficult Inspires The Noble-hearted.
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God Does Not Think; He Creates. He Does Not Exist; He Is Eternal.
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Don't Forget To Love Yourself.
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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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Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.
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To Dare Is To Lose One's Footing Momentarily. Not To Dare Is To Lose Oneself.
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The Reign Of The Tyrant Ends With His Death, And The Reign Of The Martyr Starts With It.
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The Daily Press Is The Evil Principle Of The Modern World, And Time Will Only Serve To Disclose This Fact With Greater And Greater Clearness. The Capacity Of The Newspaper For Degeneration Is Sophistically Without Limit, Since It Can Always Sink Lower And Lower In Its Choice Of Readers. At Last It Will Stir Up All Those Dregs Of Humanity Which No State Or Government Can Control.
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Intelligence Has Got The Upper Hand To Such An Extent That It Transforms The Real Task Into An Unreal Trick And Reality Into A Play.
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The Deepest Form Of Despair Is To Choose To Be Another Than Himself.
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The Truly Simple Way Of Presenting Christianity Is To Do It.
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Everyone Looks The Same To Me In A Photograph: Stupid.
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Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards; But It Must Be Lived Forwards.
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My Melancholy Is The Most Faithful Sweetheart I Have Had.
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It Is Modest Of The Nightingale Not To Require Anyone To Listen To It; But It Is Also Proud Of The Nightingale Not To Care Whether Any One Listens To It Or Not.
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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.
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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?
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In The Christianity Of Christendom The Cross Has Become Something Like The Child’s Hobby-horse And Trumpet.
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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.
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The Difference Between An Admirer And A Follower Still Remains, No Matter Where You Are. The Admirer Never Makes Any True Sacrifices. He Always Plays It Safe. Though In Words, Phrases, Songs, He Is Inexhaustible About How Highly He Prizes Christ, He Renounces Nothing, Gives Up Nothing, Will Not Reconstruct His Life, Will Not Be What He Admires, And Will Not Let His Life Express What It Is He Supposedly Admires.
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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?
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Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Human Being. Many In Every Generation May Not Come That Far, But None Comes Further.
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To Be A Woman Is Something So Strange, So Confusing And So Complicated That Only A Woman Could Put Up With It.
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Doubt Is Thought's Despair; Despair Is Personality's Doubt. . . . Doubt And Despair . . . Belong To Completely Different Spheres; Different Sides Of The Soul Are Set In Motion. . . . Despair Is An Expression Of The Total Personality, Doubt Only Of Thought.
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Once You Label Me You Negate Me.
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People Settle For A Level Of Despair They Can Tolerate And Call It Happiness.
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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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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.
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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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Shows Itself In The Notion That What May Be Objectively True May In The Mouth Of Certain People Become False.
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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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A Man's Personality Is Matured Only When He Appropriates The Truth, Whether It Is Spoken By Balaam's Ass Or A Sniggering Wag Or An Apostle Or An Angel.
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I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.
Seek First God's Kingdom, That Is, Become Like The Lilies And The Birds, Become Perfectly Silent - Then Shall The Rest Be Added Unto You.
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To Be Lost In Spiritlessness Is The Most Terrible Thing Of All.
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In Order To Learn True Humility (i Use This Expression To Describe The State Of Mind Under Discussion), It Is Good For A Person To Withdraw From The Turmoil Of The World (we See That Christ Withdrew When The People Wanted To Proclaim Him King As Well As When He Had To Walk The Thorny Path), For In Life Either The Depressing Or The Elevating Impression Is Too Dominant For A True Balance To Come About. Here, Of Course, Individuality Is Very Decisive.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Men Who Not Religious Or Artists Are Fools.
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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.
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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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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.
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The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.
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Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility
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Difficulty
Christ Has Not Only Spoken To Us By His Life But Has Also Spoken For Us By His Death.
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Death Cannot Explain Itself. The Earnestness Consists Precisely In This, That The Observer Must Explain It To Himself.
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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.
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Mistaken
I Have Never Fought In Such A Way As To Say: I Am The True Christian, Others Are Not Christians.
Christian
Way
A Human Being Is A Spirit. But What Is Spirit? Spirit Is The Self. But What Is Self? The Self Is A Relation That Relates Itself To Itself Or Is The Relation's Relating Itself To Itself In The Relation.
Self
Spirit
Relation
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.
Party
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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
Interesting
World
The Thing That Cowardice Fears Most Is Decision
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Cowardice
It Is Very Important In Life To Know When Your Cue Comes.
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Knows
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
Personality Is Only Ripe When A Man Has Made The Truth His Own.
Men
Personality
Made
Spirit Is The Third, Yet In Such A Way That One Can Speak Of A Synthesis Only When The Spirit Is Posited.
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Synthesis
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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.
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Witty
Morning
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.
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Prayer Is A Silent Surrendering Of Everything To God.
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Silent
But Doubt Is Wily And Cunning And Never, As It Is Sometimes Said To Be, Loud Or Defiant. It Is Unassuming And Sly, Not Bold Or Assertive - And The More Unassuming, The More Dangerous.
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Sometimes
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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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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.
Profound
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If I Were To Wish For Anything, I Should Not Wish For Wealth And Power, But For The Passionate Sense Of The Potential, For The Eye Which, Ever Young And Ardent, Sees The Possible. Pleasure Disappoints, Possibility Never. And What Wine Is So Sparkling, What So Fragrant, What So Intoxicating, As Possibility!
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Success
Wine
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
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.
Christian
Kings
Offering
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.
Blessing
Wind
Boredom
A Curiously Interested Observer Sees A Great Deal, A Scientifically Interested Observer Is Worthy Of All Honor, And Anxiously Interested Observer Sees What Others Do Not See, But A Crazy Observer Sees Perhaps The Most, His Observation Is More Intense And More Persistent, Just As The Senses Of Certain Animals Are Sharper Than Those Of Man.
Crazy
Men
Animal
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.
Joy
Moments
Splendid
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.
Philosophy
Ignorance
Expression
I Do Not Lack The Courage To Think A Thought Whole.
Thinking
Whole
It Seems Essential, In Relationships And All Tasks, That We Concentrate Only On What Is Most Significant And Important.
Relationship
Aquariums
Dating
There Are Two Kinds Of Geniuses. The Characteristic Of The One Is Roaring, But The Lightning Is Meagre And Rarely Strikes; The Other Kind Is Characterized By Reflection By Which It Constrains Itself Or Restrains The Roaring. But The Lightning Is All The More Intense; With The Speed And Sureness Of Lightning It Hits The Selected Particular Points - And Is Fatal.
Reflection
Two
Lightning
What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.
Passion
Reflection
Age
Old Age Realizes The Dreams Of Youth: Look At Dean Swift; In His Youth He Built An Asylum For The Insane, In His Old Age He Was Himself An Inmate.
Birthday
Dream
Time
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.
Despair
Weakness
Lawyer
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
Love
Truth
Thinking
Our Life Always Expresses The Result Of Our Dominant Thoughts.
Life Is Good
Bad Ass
Expression
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.
Childhood
Kind
Scene
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.
Love
Life
Beautiful
Irony Is A Disciplinarian Feared Only By Those Who Do Not Know It, But Cherished By Those Who Do. He Who Does Not Understand Irony And Has No Ear For Its Whispering Lacks Of What Might Called The Absolute Beginning Of The Personal Life. He Lacks What At Moments Is Indispensable For The Personal Life, Lacks Both The Regeneration And Rejuvenation, The Cleaning Baptism Of Irony That Redeems The Soul From Having Its Life In Finitude Though Living Boldly And Energetically In Finitude.
Soul
Baptism
Ironic
It Is The Normal State Of The Human Heart To Try To Build Its Identity Around Something Besides God.
Heart
Trying
Identity
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.
Truth
Kissing
Emergencies
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.
Fighting
Men
Two
The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.
Lying
Appropriation
One Can Advise Comfortably From A Safe Port.
Safety
Advice
Port
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.
Mean
Men
Dumb
Be That Self Which One Truly Is.
Knowledge
Self
Individuality
Where There Are Two People, There Is Untruth.
Spiritual
Two
People
Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk. Everyday, I Walk Myself Into A State Of Well-being & Walk Away From Every Illness. I Have Walked Myself Into My Best Thoughts, And I Know Of No Thought So Burdensome That One Cannot Walk Away From It. But By Sitting Still, & The More One Sits Still, The Closer One Comes To Feeling Ill. Thus If One Just Keeps On Walking, Everything Will Be All Right.
Sitting Still
Feelings
Everyday
Certainty... Lurks At The Door Of Faith And Threatens To Devour It.
Doors
Certainty
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.
Spring
Struggle
Fighting
What Looks Like Politics, And Imagines Itself To Be Political, Will One Day Unmask Itself As A Religious Movement.
Faith
Religious
Political Will
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
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?
Choices
Rules And Regulations
World
Most People Believe That The Christian Commandments, E.g. To Love One's Neighbor As Oneself, Are Intentionally A Little Too Severe - Like Setting A Clock Half An Hour Ahead To Make Sure Of Not Being Late In The Morning.
Christian
Morning
Believe
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
Remembrance
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.
Life
Inspiring
Wisdom
I Would Rather Be A Swineherd, Understood By The Swine, Than A Poet Misunderstood By Men.
Men
Misunderstood
Poet
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.
Taken
Race
Opposites
Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Man.
Passion
Men
Highest
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.
Philosophy
Umpires
Directors
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.
Individuality
Despair
Want
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
It Is Not The Path Which Is The Difficulty; Rather, It Is The Difficulty Which Is The Path.
Path
Difficulty
Preparation For Becoming Attentive To Christianity Does Not Consist In Reading Many Books ... But In Fuller Immersion In Existence.
Book
Reading
Preparation
Most People Believe That The Christian Commandments Are Intentionally A Little Too Severe
Christian
Believe
People
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.
Blessed
Giving
Able
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
With Respect To Physical Existence, One Needs Little, And To The Degree That One Needs Less, The More Perfect One Is.
Perfect One
Degrees
Needs
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.
Abuse
Wish
Bears
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
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
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
Voice
Silence
Silent
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.
Beautiful
Heart
Men
Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.
Life Is
Backwards
Understood
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.
Men
Understanding
Suffering
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.
Tired
Thinking
Light
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.
Destiny
Way
Authority
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.
Smile
God
Children
Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved, But A Reality To Be Experienced.
Love
Life
Happiness
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
Jurists Say That A Capital Crime Submerges All Lesser Crimes; And So It Is With Faith. Its Absurdity Makes All Petty Difficultiesvanish.
Faith
Crime
Absurdity
What Labels Me, Negates Me.
Labels
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.
Men
Order
Perfect
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.
Regret
Philosophy
Two
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.
Pain
Iron
Giving
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.
Time
Genius
Want
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.
Doubt
Together
World
In The Deepest Sense, The Being In A State Of Sin Is The Sin, The Particular Sins Are Not The Continuation Of Sin, They Are Expressions Of Its Continuation.
Expression
Sin
States
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
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.
Christian
Lying
Order
Instruction Begins When You, The Teacher, Learn From The Learner; Put Yourself In His Place So That You May Understand . . . What He Learns And The Way He Understands It.
Education
Teacher
May
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
Girl
Sight
Doe
Patience Is Necessary, And One Cannot Reap Immediately Where One Has Sown.
Patience
Be Patient
Reap
People Commonly Travel The World Over To See Rivers And Mountains, New Stars, Garish Birds, Freak Fish, Grotesque Breeds Of Human; They Fall Into An Animal Stupor That Gapes At Existence And They Think They Have Seen Something.
Travel
Stars
Fall
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.
Spring
Men
Secret
It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion
Passion
Impossible
Are You Not Aware That There Comes A Midnight Hour When Everyone Must Unmask...
Midnight
Hours
The Person Who Praises God Is On The Tracks Of Justice.
Track
Justice
Thought Provoking
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.
Self
Relation
Relate
My Tactics Were, By God's Aid, To Employ Every Means To Make It Clear What The Requirement Of Christianity Truly Is.
Mean
Requirements
Tactics
To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.
Saint
One Thing
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
Human Relations Are Like The Irregular Verbs In A Number Of Languages Where Nearly All Verbs Are Irregular.
Numbers
Verbs
Language
No One Is So Terribly Deceived As He Who Does Not Himself Suspect It.
Doe
Deceived
Suspects
The Present State Of The World And The Whole Of Life Is Diseased. If I Were A Doctor And Were Asked For My Advice, I Should Reply, 'create Silence'.
Doctors
Silence
Advice
Worldly Wisdom Thinks That Love Is A Relationship Between Man And Man. Christianity Teaches That Love Is A Relationship Between Man-god-man, That Is, That God Is The Middle Term.
Love Is
Men
Thinking
The Highest Of All Is Not To Understand The Highest But To Act Upon It.
Highest
Irony Is The Cultivation Of The Spirit And Therefore Follows Next After Immediacy; Then Comes The Ethicist, Then The Humourist, Then The Religious Person.
Religious
Next
Spirit
Once You Are Born In This World You’re Old Enough To Die.
World
Enough
Born
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.
Wine
Humble
Glasses
Adversity Not Only Draws People Together, But Brings Forth That Beautiful Inward Friendship.
Beautiful
Adversity
People
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.
Birthday
Ideas
Age
Take It And Return It: The Kiss Of Love.
Kissing
Return
Love Kissing
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.
Christian
Dream
Struggle
There Are Many People Who Reach Their Conclusions About Life Like Schoolboys: They Cheat Their Master By Copying The Answer Out Of A Book Without Having Worked The Sum Out For Themselves.
Life
Book
People
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.
Silence
Understanding
Divinity
The Wisdom Of The Years Is Confusing. Only The Wisdom Of Eternity Is Edifying.
Years
Confusing
Eternity
People Generally Think That It Is The World, The Environment, External Relationships, Which Stand In One's Way, In The Way Of Ones' Good Fortune... And At Bottom It Is Always Man Himself That Stands In His Own Way.
Honesty
Men
Thinking
Job Endured Everything - Until His Friends Came To Comfort Him, Then He Grew Impatient.
Friendship
Jobs
Comfort
Do It Or Don't Do It - You Will Regret Both.
Regret
You Will Regret
It's Better To Get Lost In The Passion Than To Lose The Passion
Passion
Lost
Loses
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.
Running
Despair
Noise
There Can Be No Faith Without Risk.
Risk
If You Want To Be Loathsome To God, Just Run With The Herd.
Running
Want
Herds
Irony Limits, Finitizes, And Circumscribes And Thereby Yields Truth, Actuality, Content; It Disciplines And Punishes And Thereby Yields Balance And Consistency.
Yield
Discipline
Consistency
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.
Love
Prayer
Men
A Fire Broke Out Backstage In A Theatre. The Clown Came Out To Warn The Public; They Thought It Was A Joke And Applauded. He Repeated It; The Acclaim Was Even Greater. I Think That's Just How The World Will Come To An End: To The General Applause Of Wits Who Believe It's A Joke.
Believe
Thinking
Fire
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