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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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...the Reason For [this

Soren Kierkegaard

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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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Absolute Passion Cannot Be Understood By A Third Party.

The Highest And Most Beautiful Things In Life Are Not To Be Heard About, Nor Read About, Nor Seen But, If One Will, Are To Be Lived.

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

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.

This Age Will Die Not As A Result Of Some Evil, But From A Lack Of Passion.

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

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.

Worship Isn't God's Show. God Is The Audience. God's Watching. The Congregation, They Are The Actors In This Drama. Worship Is Their Show. And The Minister Is Just Reminding The People Of Their Forgotten Lines.

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

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.

...he Who Always Hopes For The Best Becomes Old, Deceived By Life, And He Who Is Always Prepared For The Worst Becomes Old Prematurely; But He Who Has Faith, Retains Eternal Youth.

Hoping For The Best

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.

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.

Language Has Time As Its Element; All Other Media Have Space As Their Element.

For He Who Loves God Without Faith Reflects On Himself, While The Person Who Loves God In Faith Reflects On God.

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

I Feel As If I Were A Piece In A Game Of Chess, When My Opponent Says Of It: That Piece Cannot Be Moved.

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.

O Luther, You Had 95 Theses . . . The Matter Is Far More Terrible-there Is Only One Thesis. The Christianity Of The New Testament Does Not Exist At All. Here There Is Nothing To Reform.

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

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

And Then The Spirit Brings Hope, Hope In The Strictest Christian Sense, Hope Which Is Hoping Against Hope. For An Immediate Hope Exists In Every Person; It May Be More Powerfully Alive In One Person Than In Another; But In Death Every Hope Of This Kind Dies And Turns Into Hopelessness. Into This Night Of Hopelessness (it Is Death That We Are Describing) Comes The Life-giving Spirit And Brings Hope, The Hope Of Eternity. It Is Against Hope, For There Was No Longer Any Hope For That Merely Natural Hope; This Hope Is Therefore A Hope Contrary To Hope.

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.

The Individual (no Matter How Well-meaning He Might Be, No Matter How Much Strength He Might Have, If Only He Would Use It) Does Not Have The Passion To Rip Himself Away From Either The Coils Of Reflection Or The Seductive Ambiguities Of Reflection; Nor Do The Surroundings And Times Have Any Events Or Passions, But Rather Provide A Negative Setting Of A Habit Of Reflection, Which Plays With Some Illusory Project Only To Betray Him In The End With A Way Out: It Shows Him That The Most Clever Thing To Do Is Nothing At All.

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.

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

Idleness, We Are Accustomed To Say, Is The Root Of All Evil. To Prevent This Evil, Work Is Recommended.... Idleness As Such Is By No Means A Root Of Evil; On The Contrary, It Is Truly A Divine Life, If One Is Not Bored.

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

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

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.

Men Who Not Religious Or Artists Are Fools.

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

You Will Regret

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Christianity Demands The Crucifixion Of The Intellect.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

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

Where There Are Two People, There Is Untruth.

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.

If I Could Prescribe Only One Remedy For All The Ills Of The Modern World, I Would Prescribe Silence.

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

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

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

Dread Is A Sympathetic Antipathy And An Antipathetic Sympathy.

To Have Faith Is Precisely To Lose One's Mind So As To Win God.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom.

Personality Is Only Ripe When A Man Has Made The Truth His Own.

With The Daguerreotype, Everyone Will Be Able To Have Their Portrait Taken . . . And At The Same Time Everything Is Being Done To Make Us All Look Exactly The Same.

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.

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

Don't Forget To Love Yourself.

The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.

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.

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.

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

Most Interesting

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.

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.

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.

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

Only One Deception Is Possible In The Infinite Sense, Self-deception.

Irony Is The Birth-pangs Of The Objective Mind (based Upon The Misrelationship, Discovered By The I , Between Existence And The Idea Of Existence). Humor Is The Birth -pangs Of The Absolute Mind (based Upon The Misrelationship, Discovered By The I , Between The I And The Idea Of The I .

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

In Addition To My Other Numerous Acquaintances, I Have One More Intimate Confidant. ... My Depression Is The Most Faithful Mistress I Have Known - No Wonder, Then, That I Return The Love.

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

Never Cease Loving A Person, And Never Give Up Hope For Him, For Even The Prodigal Son Who Had Fallen Most Low, Could Still Be Saved; The Bitterest Enemy And Also He Who Was Your Friend Could Again Be Your Friend; Love That Has Grown Cold Can Kindle.

Falling In Love

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.

I Must Find A Truth That Is True For Me.

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

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

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.

To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.

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

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

The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.

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

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

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.

Falling In Love

This Is What Is Sad When One Contemplates Human Life, That So Many Live Out Their Lives In Quiet Lostness...they Live, As It Were, Away From Themselves And Vanish Like Shadows. Their Immortal Souls Are Blown Away, And They Are Not Disquieted By The Question Of Its Immortality, Because They Are Already Disintegrated Before They Die.

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

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.

At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.

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

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

In Order To Help Another Effectively, I Must Understand What He Understands. If I Do Not Know That, My Greater Understanding Will Be Of No Help To Him... Instruction Begins When You Put Yourself In His Place So That You May Understand What He Understands And In The Way He Understands It.

Adversity Not Only Draws People Together, But Brings Forth That Beautiful Inward Friendship.

There Can Be No Faith Without Risk.

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

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

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.

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.

Deep Within Every Man There Lies The Dread Of Being Alone In The World, Forgotten By God, Overlooked Among The Tremendous Household Of Millions And Millions.

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.

Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Human Being. Many In Every Generation May Not Come That Far, But None Comes Further.

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?

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.

Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility

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'.

My Standpoint Is Armed Neutrality.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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

Preparation For Becoming Attentive To Christianity Does Not Consist In Reading Many Books ... But In Fuller Immersion In Existence.

Most People Believe That The Christian Commandments Are Intentionally A Little Too Severe

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

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.

What Labels Me, Negates Me.

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

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

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

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.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

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

The God That Can Be Named Is Not God.

Repetition Is The Reality And The Seriousness Of Life.

However Much One Generation Learns From Another, It Can Never Learn From Its Predecessor The Genuinely Human Factor. In This Respect Every Generation Begins Afresh. Thus No Generation Has Learned From Another How To Love, No Generation Can Begin Other Than At The Beginning.

Thus Our Own Age Is Essentially One Of Understanding, And On The Average, Perhaps, More Knowledgeable Than Any Former Generation, But It Is Without Passion. Every One Knows A Great Deal, We All Know Which Way We Ought To Go And All The Different Ways We Can Go, But Nobody Is Willing To Move.

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.

To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.

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

Prayer Does Not Change God, But It Changes Him Who Prays.

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.

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.

Irony Is A Disciplinarian Feared Only By Those Who Do Not Know It, But Cherished By Those Who Do

For The Sadness In Legitimate Humour Consists In The Fact That Honestly And Without Deceit It Reflects In A Purely Human Way Upon What It Is To Be A Child.

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.

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.

...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.

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

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

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.

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.

May New Sufferings Torment Your Soul.

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.

That Which Is Truly Human No Generation Learns From The One Before It. No Generation Learns From Another How To Love. No Generation Has A Shorter Task Assigned To It Except Insofar As The Previous Generation Shirked Its Task And Deluded Itself.

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.

To Venture Causes Anxiety, But Not To Venture Is To Lose One's Self.... And To Venture In The Highest Is Precisely To Be Conscious Of One's Self.

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

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

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

It Will Be Easy For Us The First Time We Receive That Ball Of Yarn From Ariadne (love) And Then Go Through All The Mazes Of The Labyrinth (life) And Kill The Monster. But How Many There Are Who Plunge Into Life (the Labyrinth) Without Taking That Precaution?

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

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

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

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

The Unhappy Person Is Never Present To Themself Because They Always Live In The Past Or The Future.

Faith Is Holding Onto Uncertainties With Passionate Conviction.

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

This Is The Miracle Of Life: That Each Person Who Heeds Him Or Herself Knows What No Scientist Can Ever Know: Who He Or She Is.

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

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!

Maturity Consists In The Discovery That There Comes A Critical Moment Where Everything Is Reversed, After Which The Point Becomes To Understand More And More That There Is Something Which Cannot Be Understood.

Critical Moments

Genius Never Desires What Does Not Exist.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

Be That Self Which One Truly Is.

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

It Occurs To Me That Artists Go Forward By Going Backward, Something Which I Have Nothing Against Intrinsically When It Is A Reproduced Retreat - As Is The Case With The Better Artists.

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.

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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