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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.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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This Is The Miracle

Soren Kierkegaard
...
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.

Understanding the Quote: "this is the miracle of life: that each person who heeds him..."

This quote by Soren Kierkegaard reflects deeply on the theme of self. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Self, Miracle, Scientist, 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 self and miracle. 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
Self
Miracle
Scientist
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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.
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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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...why Bother Remembering A Past That Cannot Be Made Into A Present?
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It Was Not To Save A Nation That Abraham Went To Sacrifice Isaac, Nor To Appease Angry Gods... Then Why Does Abraham Do It? For God's Sake... He Does It For The Sake Of God Because God Demands Proof Of His Faith... He Was Not Justified By Being Virtuous, But By Being An Individual Submitted To God In Faith.
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No One Is So Terribly Deceived As He Who Does Not Himself Suspect It.
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You Should Therefore Say: Alone In One's Boat, Alone With One's Care, Alone With One's Despair, Which One Is Craven Enough To Want Rather To Keep Than Submit To The Pain Of Being Healed.
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The Meaning Lies In The Appropriation.
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Faith Is A Marvel, And Yet No Human Being Is Excluded From It; For That In Which All Human Life Is United Is Passion, And Faith Is A Passion.
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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.
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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.
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The Most Painful State Of Being Is Remembering The Future, Particularly The One You'll Never Have.
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It Is Not The Path Which Is The Difficulty; Rather, It Is The Difficulty Which Is The Path.
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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.
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Backwards Understood Be Only Can But, Forwards Lived Be Must Life.
Creativity
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The Person Who Praises God Is On The Tracks Of Justice.
Track
Justice
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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.
Learning
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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.
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Boredom Is The Root Of All Evil - The Despairing Refusal To Be Oneself.
Good Life
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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
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Children
The Tyrant Dies And His Rule Is Over, The Martyr Dies And His Rule Begins.
Death
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It's Better To Get Lost In The Passion Than To Lose The Passion
Passion
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All Essential Knowledge Relates To Existence, Or Only Such Knowledge As Has An Essential Relationship To Existence Is Essential Knowledge.
Essentials
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I Have Attacked No One As Not Being A Christian, I Have Condemned No One.
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Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Love Is All, It Gives All, And It Takes All.
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During The First Period Of A Man's Life The Greatest Danger Is Not To Take The Risk.
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With Respect To Physical Existence, One Needs Little, And To The Degree That One Needs Less, The More Perfect One Is.
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Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk.
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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.
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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?
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It Is Very Important In Life To Know When Your Cue Comes.
Important
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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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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.
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When You Say 'yes' Or Promise Something, You Can Very Easily Deceive Yourself And Others Also, As If You Had Already Done What You Promised. It Is Easy To Think That By Making A Promise You Have At Least Done Part Of What You Promised To Do, As If The Promise Itself Were Something Of Value. Not At All! In Fact, When You Do Not Do What You Promise, It Is A Long Way Back To The Truth.
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Hope Is Passion For What Is Possible.
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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?
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Trouble Is The Common Denominator Of Living. It Is The Great Equalizer.
Adversity
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One Can Advise Comfortably From A Safe Port.
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When You Were Called, Did You Answer Or Did You Not? Perhaps Softly And In A Whisper?
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When You Read God's Word, You Must Constantly Be Saying To Yourself, "it Is Talking To Me, And About Me".
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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.
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Difficulty
At One Time My Only Wish Was To Be A Police Official. It Seemed To Me To Be An Occupation For My Sleepless Intriguing Mind. I Had The Idea That There, Among Criminals, Were People To Fight: Clever, Vigorous, Crafty Fellows. Later I Realized That It Was Good That I Did Not Become One, For Most Police Cases Involve Misery And Wretchedness-not Crimes And Scandals.
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...even The Richest Personality Is Nothing Before He Has Chosen Himself, And On The Other Hand Even What One Might Call The Poorest Personality Is Everything When He Has Chosen Himself; For The Great Thing Is Not To Be This Or That But To Be Oneself, And This Everyone Can Be If He Wills It.
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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.
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The Difference Between A Man Who Faces Death For The Sake Of An Idea And An Imitator Who Goes In Search Of Martyrdom Is That Whilst The Former Expresses His Idea Most Fully In Death It Is The Strange Feeling Of Bitterness Which Comes From Failure That The Latter Really Enjoys; The Former Rejoices In His Victory, The Latter In His Suffering.
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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.
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What Is A Poet? An Unhappy Person Who Conceals Profound Anguish In His Heart But Whose Lips Are So Formed That As Sighs And Cries Pass Over Them They Sound Like Beautiful Music.
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To Stand On One Leg And Prove God's Existence Is A Very Different Thing From Going On One's Knees And Thanking Him.
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Legs
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If You Want To Be Loathsome To God, Just Run With The Herd.
Running
Want
Herds
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.
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May New Sufferings Torment Your Soul.
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Leap Of Faith – Yes, But Only After Reflection
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There Is Nothing With Which Every Man Is So Afraid As Getting To Know How Enormously Much He Is Capable Of Doing And Becoming.
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Now, With God's Help, I Shall Become Myself.
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The Unhappy Person Is Never Present To Themself Because They Always Live In The Past Or The Future.
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Pleasure Disappoints; Possibility Never.
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The Paradox Is Really The Pathos Of Intellectual Life And Just As Only Great Souls Are Exposed To Passions It Is Only The Great Thinker Who Is Exposed To What I Call Paradoxes, Which Are Nothing Else Than Grandiose Thoughts In Embryo.
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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.
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Where Am I? Who Am I? How Did I Come To Be Here? What Is This Thing Called The World?
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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.
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Therefore Do Not Deceive Yourself! Of All Deceivers Fear Most Yourself!
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A Possibility Is A Hint From God. One Must Follow It.
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Philosophy Is Life's Dry-nurse, Who Can Take Care Of Us - But Not Suckle Us.
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Most People Live Dejectedly In Worldly Joys Or Sorrows. They Sit On The Sidelines And Do Not Join The Dance.
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Truth Is Not Introduced Into The Individual From Without, But Was Within Him All The Time.
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Are You Not Aware That There Comes A Midnight Hour When Everyone Must Unmask...
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At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.
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Job Endured Everything - Until His Friends Came To Comfort Him, Then He Grew Impatient.
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The More A Man Can Forget, The Greater The Number Of Metamorphoses Which His Life Can Undergo; The More He Can Remember, The More Divine His Life Becomes.
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...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.
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The Truth Is A Trap: You Cannot Get It Without It Getting You; You Cannot Get The Truth By Capturing It, Only By Its Capturing You.
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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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... The More One Needs God The More Perfect He Is. To Need God Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of But Is Perfection Itself. It Is The Saddest Thing In The World If A Human Being Goes Through Life Without Discovering That He Needs God!
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It Is Impossible To Exist Without Passion
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I Divide My Time As Follows: Half The Time I Sleep, The Other Half I Dream. I Never Dream When I Sleep, For That Would Be A Pity, For Sleeping Is The Highest Accomplishment Of Genius.
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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.
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I Stick My Finger Into Existence.. It Smells Of Nothing. Where Am I? Who Am I? What Is This Thing Called The World? What Does This Word Mean?
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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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During The First Period Of Our Lives The Greatest Danger Is Not To Take The Risk. When Once The Risk Has Been Taken, Then The Greatest Danger Is To Risk Too Much. By Not Risking At First One Turns Aside And Serves Trivialities; In The Second Case, By Risking Too Much, One Turns Aside To The Fantastic And Perhaps To Presumption.
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A Good Decision Is Our Will To Do Everything We Can Within Our Power. It Means To Serve God With All We've Got, Be It Little Or Much. Every Person Can Do That.
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Decision
The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.
Doors
This, Then, Is The Ultimate Paradox Of Thought: To Want To Discover Something That Thought Itself Cannot Think.
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Want
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It Is The Normal State Of The Human Heart To Try To Build Its Identity Around Something Besides God.
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Trying
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Irony Is The Cultivation Of The Spirit And Therefore Follows Next After Immediacy; Then Comes The Ethicist, Then The Humourist, Then The Religious Person.
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Next
Spirit
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.
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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.
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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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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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It Was Completely Fruitless To Quarrel With The World, Whereas The Quarrel With Oneself Was Occasionally Fruitful And Always, She Had To Admit, Interesting.
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Whoever Has Learned To Be Anxious In The Right Way Has Learned The Ultimate.
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Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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What Is Existence For But To Be Laughed At If Men In Their Twenties Have Already Attained The Utmost?
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Twenties
Existence
Life Has Its Own Hidden Forces Which You Can Only Discover By Living.
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Force
A 'no' Does Not Hide Anything, But A 'yes' Very Easily Becomes A Deception.
Deception
Promise
Doe
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.
Men
Self
Two
It Is Perfectly True, As Philosophers Say, That Life Must Be Understood Backwards. But They Forget The Other Proposition, That It Must Be Lived Forwards.
Life
Wisdom
Philosopher
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.
Christian
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Heart
It Is Not A Gain That Guilt Should Be Wholly Forgotten. On The Contrary, It Is Loss And Perdition. But It Is A Gain To Win An Inner Intensity Of Heart Through A Deeper And Deeper Inner Sorrowing Over Guilt.
Heart
Loss
Winning
Where Unclarity Resides, There Is Temptation, And There It Proves Only Too Easily The Stronger. Wherever There Is Ambiguity, Wherever There Is Wavering, There Is Disobedience Down At The Bottom.
Christian
Temptation
Stronger
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.
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Lying
Order
Which Is More Difficult, To Awaken One Who Sleeps Or To Awaken One Who, Awake, Dreams That He Is Awake?
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Sleep
Difficult
Men Think That It Is Impossible For A Human Being To Love His Enemies, For Enemies Are Hardly Able To Endure The Sight Of One Another. Well, Then, Shut Your Eyes--and Your Enemy Looks Just Like Your Neighbor.
Eye
Men
Thinking
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
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.
Grief
Knowledge
Men
The Function Of Prayer Is Not To Influence God, But Rather To Change The Nature Of The One Who Prays.
Change
God
Faith
Comparison Is The Most Dangerous Acquaintance Love Can Make.
Dangerous
Acquaintance
Discernment
Personality Is Only Ripe When A Man Has Made The Truth His Own.
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Personality
Made
... All Comparisons Injure.
Comparison
Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards; But It Must Be Lived Forwards.
Love
Life
Positive
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
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 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.
Clever
Philosophy
Stupid
Human Relations Are Like The Irregular Verbs In A Number Of Languages Where Nearly All Verbs Are Irregular.
Numbers
Verbs
Language
If Anyone On The Verge Of Action Should Judge Himself According To The Outcome, He Would Never Begin.
Judging
Outcomes
Action
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
I Stick My Finger Into Existence And It Smells Of Nothing.
Smell
Sticks
Fingers
The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.
Passion
Thinking
Conclusion
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
On The Whole, The Longing For Solitude Is A Sign That There Still Is Spirit In A Person And Is A Measure Of What Spirit There Is.
Solitude
Spirit
Longing
Love Believes All Things And Yet Is Never Deceived.
Believe
Love Is
Deceived
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
Deep Within Every Human Being There Still Lives The Anxiety Over The Possibility Of Being Alone In The World, Forgotten By God, Overlooked Among The Millions And Millions In This Enormous Household. One Keeps This Anxiety At A Distance By Looking At The Many Round About Who Are Related To Him As Kin And Friends, But The Anxiety Is Still There, Nevertheless, And One Hardly Dares Think Of How He Would Feel If All This Were Taken Away.
Distance
Taken
Thinking
The 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
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
Most Men Pursue Pleasure With Such Breathless Haste That They Hurry Past It.
Happiness
Patience
Time
The Question Is Not "to Be Or Not To Be," It Is What We Should Be Until We Are Not.
Should
Be Or Not To Be
Our Age Is Essentially One Of Understanding And Reflection, Without Passion, Momentarily Bursting Into Enthusiasm And Shrewdly Relapsing Into Repose.
Passion
Reflection
Understanding
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.
Mean
Roots
Evil
Christians Remind Me Of Schoolboys Who Want To Look Up The Answers To Their Math Problems In The Back Of The Book Rather Than Work Them Through.
Faith
Christian
Religious
Human Justice Is Very Prolix, And Yet At Times Quite Mediocre; Divine Justice Is More Concise And Needs No Information From The Prosecution, No Legal Papers, No Interrogation Of Witnesses, But Makes The Guilty One His Own Informer And Helps Him With Eternity's Memory.
Memories
Divine Justice
Paper
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.
Maturity
Discovery
Critical Moments
I Go Fishing For A Thousand Monsters In The Depths Of My Own Self
Self
Fishing
Monsters
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).
Men
People
Speech
Patience Is Necessary, And One Cannot Reap Immediately Where One Has Sown.
Patience
Be Patient
Reap
Spirit Is The Third, Yet In Such A Way That One Can Speak Of A Synthesis Only When The Spirit Is Posited.
Way
Synthesis
Spirit
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
It Seems Essential, In Relationships And All Tasks, That We Concentrate Only On What Is Most Significant And Important.
Relationship
Aquariums
Dating
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.
Christian
Hope
Night
There Is Peace And Rest And Comfort In Sorrow
Sorrow
Comfort
To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.
Saint
One Thing
...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.
Christian
Technology
One Direction
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.
Love
Needs
Should
Far From Idleness Being The Root Of All Evil, It Is Rather The Only True Good.
Family
Work
Roots
What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.
Passion
Reflection
Age
The Absurd . . . The Fact That With God All Things Are Possible. The Absurd Is Not One Of The Factors Which Can Be Discriminated Within The Proper Compass Of The Understanding: It Is Not Identical With The Improbable, The Unexpected, The Unforeseen.
Understanding
Facts
Unexpected
If You Think You Understand, It Isn't God.
Thinking
Ifs
In The Christianity Of Christendom The Cross Has Become Something Like The Child’s Hobby-horse And Trumpet.
Horse
Children
Hobbies
The Highest Of All Is Not To Understand The Highest But To Act Upon It.
Highest
My Sorrow Is My Castle.
Sorrow
Castles
Philosophy Always Requires Something More, Requires The Eternal, The True, In Contrast To Which Even The Fullest Existence As Such Is But A Happy Moment.
Philosophy
Science
Philosopher
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.
Love
Prayer
Long
I Begin With The Principle That All Men Are Bores. Surely No One Will Prove Himself So Great A Bore As To Contradict Me In This.
Men
Bores You
Boredom
Any Truth Is Only True Up To A Certain Point. When One Oversteps The Mark, It Becomes A Non-truth.
Truth
Truth Is
Mark
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.
Despair
Common
Form
Don't You Know That A Midnight Hour Comes When Everyone Has To Take Off His Mask? Do You Think Life Always Lets Itself Be Trifled With? Do You Think You Can Sneak Off A Little Before Midnight To Escape This?
Thinking
Midnight
Littles
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
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
The Stone That Was Rolled Before Christ's Tomb Might Appropriately Be Called The Philosopher's Stone Because Its Removal Gave Not Only The Pharisees But, Now For 1800 Years, The Philosophers So Much To Think About.
Thinking
Years
Pharisees
A Poet Is Not An Apostle; He Drives Out Devils Only By The Power Of The Devil.
Devil
Critical Thinking
Poet
Busyness, Keeping Up With Others, Hustling Hither And Yon, Makes It Almost Impossible For An Individual To Form A Heart.
Christian
Heart
Hustle
The Task Must Be Made Difficult, For Only The Difficult Inspires The Noble-hearted.
Inspire
Tasks
Noble
This Is All That I've Known For Certain, That God Is Love. Even If I Have Been Mistaken On This Or That Point: God Is Nevertheless Love.
Love
Certain
Mistaken
...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.
Men
Being Real
Messages
Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.
Life Is
Backwards
Understood
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.
Distance
Greatness
Yesterday
That Is The Road We All Have To Take - Over The Bridge Of Sight Into Eternity.
Journey
Sight
Bridges
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.
Victory
Trying
May
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.
Truth
Order
Clothes
The Truth Must Essentially Be Regarded As In Conflict With This World; The World Has Never Been So Good, And Will Never Become So Good That The Majority Will Desire The Truth.
Truth
Desire
Majority
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
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?
Yarn
Labyrinth
Mazes
The God That Can Be Named Is Not God.
To Cheat Oneself Out Of Love Is The Most Terrible Deception; It Is An Eternal Loss For Which There Is No Reparation, Either In Time Or In Eternity.
Love
Heartbreak
Cheating
It Is Only All Too Easy To Understand The Requirements Contained In God's Word ('give All Your Goods To The Poor.' 'if Anyone Strikes You On The Right Cheek, Turn The Left.' 'if Anyone Takes Your Coat, Let Him Have Your Cloak Also. Rejoice Always.' 'count It Sheer Joy When You Meet Various Temptations' Etc.). The Most Ignorant, Poor Creature Cannot Honestly Deny Being Able To Understand God's Requirements. But It Is Tough On The Flesh To Will To Understand It And To Then Act Accordingly. It Is Not A Question Of Interpretation, But Action.
Christian
Giving
Joy
To Have Faith Is Precisely To Lose One's Mind So As To Win God.
Winning
Mind
Have Faith
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
Take A Chance And You May Lose. Take Not A Chance And You Have Lost Already.
May
Chance
Lost
If The Ethical - That Is, Social Morality- Is The Highest ... Then No Categories Are Needed Other Than The Greek Philosophical Categories.
Philosophical
Greek
Morality
Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved, But A Reality To Be Experienced.
Love
Life
Happiness
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.
Men
Egypt
Fields
Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.
Tense
Present Tense
It Is Not Where We Breathe, But Where We Love, That We Live.
Breathe
Theology Sits Rouged At The Window And Courts Philosophy's Favor, Offering To Sell Her Charms To It.
Philosophy
Offering
Favors
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
Learning To Know Anxiety Is An Adventure Which Every Man Has To Affront If He Would Not Go To Perdition Either By Not Having Known Anxiety Or By Sinking Under It. He Therefore Who Has Leaned Rightly To Be In Anxiety Has Learned The Most Important Thing.
Adventure
Men
Anxiety
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.
Christian
Powerful
Passion
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
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.
Tea Leaves
Three
Pieces
...there Is One Thing That All Satan's Cunning And All The Snares Of Temptation Cannot Take By Surprise - An Undivided Will.
Christian
Temptation
Satan
The Thinker Without A Paradox Is Like A Lover Without A Feeling: A Paltry Mediocrity.
Feelings
Mediocrity
Lovers
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.
Attitude
Passion
Character
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
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.
Taken
Portraits
Daguerreotypes
On The Secretly Blushing Cheek Is Reflected The Glow Of The Heart
Heart
Blushing
Cheeks
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