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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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To Defend Something Is

Soren Kierkegaard

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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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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.

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.

I Do Not Care For Anything. I Do Not Care To Ride, For The Exercise Is Too Violent. I Do Not Care To Walk, Walking Is Too Strenuous. I Do Not Care To Lie Down, For I Should Either Have To Remain Lying, And I Do Not Care To Do That, Or I Should Have To Get Up Again, And I Do Not Care To Do That Either. Summa Summarum: I Do Not Care At All.

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.

Love Does Not Alter The Beloved, It Alters Itself.

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.

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

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

It Is A Very Curious Thing About Superstition. One Would Expect That The Man Who Had Once Seen His Morbid Dreams Were Not Fulfilled Would Abandon Them For The Future; But On The Contrary They Grow Even Stronger Just As The Love Of Gambling Increases In A Man Who Has Once Lost In A Lottery.

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

There Is Nothing With Which Every Man Is So Afraid As Getting To Know How Enormously Much He Is Capable Of Doing And Becoming.

Adversity Draws Men Together And Produces Beauty And Harmony In Life's Relationships, Just As The Cold Of Winter Produces Ice-flowers On The Window-panes, Which Vanish With The Warmth.

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.

Confidence Is The Present Tense Of Hope.

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.

One Can Advise Comfortably From A Safe Port.

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.

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.

When You Read God's Word, You Must Constantly Be Saying To Yourself, "it Is Talking To Me, And About Me".

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.

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

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

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

It Requires Courage Not To Surrender Oneself To The Ingenious Or Compassionate Counsels Of Despair That Would Induce A Man To Eliminate Himself From The Ranks Of The Living; But It Does Not Follow From This That Every Huckster Who Is Fattened And Nourished In Self-confidence Has More Courage Than The Man Who Yielded To Despair.

Self Confidence

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

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.

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

Because Of Its Tremendous Solemnity Death Is The Light In Which Great Passions, Both Good And Bad, Become Transparent, No Longer Limited By Outward Appearances.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

It Is (to Describe It Figuratively) As If An Author Were To Make A Slip Of The Pen, And As If This Clerical Error Became Conscious Of Being Such. Perhaps This Was No Error But In A Far Higher Sense Was An Essential Part Of The Whole Exposition. It Is, Then, As If This Clerical Error Were To Revolt Against The Author, Out Of Hatred For Him, Were To Forbid Him To Correct It, And Were To Say, "no, I Will Not Be Erased, I Will Stand As A Witness Against Thee, That Thou Art A Very Poor Writer."

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

What Our Age Lacks Is Not Reflection, But Passion.

For Without Risk There Is No Faith, And The Greater The Risk, The Greater The Faith.

Of All Ridiculous Things The Most Ridiculous Seems To Me, To Be Busy — To Be A Man Who Is Brisk About His Food And His Work. Therefore, Whenever I See A Fly Settling, In The Decisive Moment, On The Nose Of Such A Person Of Affairs; Or If He Is Spattered With Mud From A Carriage Which Drives Past Him In Still Greater Haste; Or The Drawbridge Opens Up Before Him; Or A Tile Falls Down And Knocks Him Dead, Then I Laugh Heartily.

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.

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.

The Task Must Be Made Difficult, For Only The Difficult Inspires The Noble-hearted.

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.

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

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.

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.

How Did I Get Into The World? Why Was I Not Asked About It And Why Was I Not Informed Of The Rules And Regulations But Just Thrust Into The Ranks As If I Had Been Bought By A Peddling Shanghaier Of Human Beings? How Did I Get Involved In This Big Enterprise Called Actuality? Why Should I Be Involved? Isn't It A Matter Of Choice? And If I Am Compelled To Be Involved, Where Is The Manager—i Have Something To Say About This. Is There No Manager? To Whom Shall I Make My Complaint?

Rules And Regulations

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.

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.

Most People Are Subjective Toward Themselves And Objective Toward All Others, Frightfully Objective Sometimes--but The Task Is Precisely To Be Objective Toward Oneself And Subjective Toward All Others.

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

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

Prayer Is A Silent Surrendering Of Everything To God.

My Tactics Were, By God's Aid, To Employ Every Means To Make It Clear What The Requirement Of Christianity Truly Is.

Any Truth Is Only True Up To A Certain Point. When One Oversteps The Mark, It Becomes A Non-truth.

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?

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

Most Interesting

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

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.

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.

Christianity Demands The Crucifixion Of The Intellect.

What A Difference! Under The Esthetic Sky, Everything Is Buoyant, Beautiful, Transient! When Ethics Arrives On The Scene, Everything Becomes Harsh, Angular And Infinitely Boring

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.

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.

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

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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.

Repetition Is The Reality And The Seriousness Of Life.

My Sorrow Is My Castle.

Happiness Is The Greatest Hiding Place For Despair.

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.

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

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

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.

Be That Self Which One Truly Is.

...my Soul Always Reverts To The Old Testament And To Shakespeare. There At Least One Feels That It's Human Beings Talking. There People Hate, People Love, People Murder Their Enemy And Curse His Descendants Through All Generations, There People Sin.

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.

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.

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

Therefore Do Not Deceive Yourself! Of All Deceivers Fear Most Yourself!

May New Sufferings Torment Your Soul.

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.

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

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.

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!

It Is Very Dangerous To Go Into Eternity With Possibilities Which One Has Oneself Prevented From Becoming Realities. A Possibility Is A Hint From God. One Must Follow It.

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

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.

I Would Have Perished Had I Not Perished.

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.

Job Endured Everything - Until His Friends Came To Comfort Him, Then He Grew Impatient.

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.

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'.

...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.

I Am So Fed Up And Joyless That Not Only Have I Nothing To Fill My Soul, I Cannot Even Conceive Of Anything That Could Possibly Satisfy It - Alas, Not Even The Bliss Of Heaven.

People Settle For A Level Of Despair They Can Tolerate And Call It Happiness.

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

In My Great Melancholy, I Loved Life, For I Love My Melancholy.

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

Everyone Looks The Same To Me In A Photograph: Stupid.

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.

All Essential Knowledge Relates To Existence, Or Only Such Knowledge As Has An Essential Relationship To Existence Is Essential Knowledge.

Once You Label Me You Negate Me.

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.

Sin Is In Itself Separation From The Good, But Despair Over Sin Is Separation A Second Time.

Compared With The Person Who Is Conscious Of His Despair, The Despairing Individual Who Is Ignorant Of His Despair Is Simply A Negativity Further Away From The Truth And Deliverance. . . . Yet Ignorance Is So Far From Breaking The Despair Or Changing Despair To Nondespairing That It Can In Fact Be The Most Dangerous Form Of Despair. . . . An Individual Is Furthest From Being Conscious Of Himself As Spirit When He Is Ignorant Of Being In Despair. But Precisely This-not To Be Conscious Of Oneself As Spirit-is Despair, Which Is Spiritlessness. . . .

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.

Christendom Has Done Away With Christianity Without Being Quite Aware Of It.

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!

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).

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.

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.

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

It Is Not Where We Breathe, But Where We Love, That We Live.

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 More Men Believe An Idea To Be True The Greater The Likelihood That The Idea Is Mistaken. Those Who Are Right Usually Stand Alone.

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.

Every Human Being Is Tried This Way In The Active Service Of Expectancy. Now Comes The Fulfillment And Relieves Him, But Soon He Is Again Placed On Reconnaissance For Expectancy; Then He Is Again Relieved, But As Long As There Is Any Future For Him, He Has Not Yet Finished His Service. And While Human Life Goes On This Way In Very Diverse Expectancy, Expecting Very Different Things According To Different Times And Occasions And In Different Frames Of Mind, All Life Is Again One Nightwatch Of Expectancy.

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.

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.

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.

To Be A Teacher Does Not Mean Simply To Affirm That Such A Thing Is So, Or To Deliver A Lecture, Etc.

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

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.

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

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.

It Takes Moral Courage To Grieve; It Requires Religious Courage To Rejoice.

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

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

Wherever There Is A Crowd There Is Untruth.

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.

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

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

It 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

If A Man Cannot Forget, He Will Never Amount To Much.

The Person Who Praises God Is On The Tracks Of Justice.

Thought Provoking

This, Then, Is The Ultimate Paradox Of Thought: To Want To Discover Something That Thought Itself Cannot Think.

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.

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

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

I'm So Misunderstood That People Misunderstand Me Even When I Tell Them I'm Misunderstood.

People Demand Freedom Of Speech As A Compensation For The Freedom Of Thought Which They Seldom Use.

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

The Proud Person Always Wants To Do The Right Thing, The Great Thing. But Because He Wants To Do It In His Own Strength, He Is Fighting Not With Man, But With God.

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.

Future Is Everything That Past Has Forgotten.

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

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

Comparison Is The Most Dangerous Acquaintance Love Can Make.

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

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.

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

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.

Sleeping Is The Height Of Genius

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.

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

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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.

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

Jurists Say That A Capital Crime Submerges All Lesser Crimes; And So It Is With Faith. Its Absurdity Makes All Petty Difficultiesvanish.

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 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.

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

Love Believes All Things And Yet Is Never Deceived.

And This Is One Of The Most Crucial Definitions For The Whole Of Christianity; That The Opposite Of Sin Is Not Virtue But Faith.

The Truth Is A Snare: You Cannot Have It, Without Being Caught. You Cannot Have The Truth In Such A Way That You Catch It, But Only In Such A Way That It Catches You.

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.

If A Man Wants To Set Up As An Innkeeper And He Does Not Succeed, It Is Not Comic. If, On The Contrary, A Girl Asks To Be Allowed To Set Up As A Prostitute And She Fails, As Sometimes Happens, It Is Comic.

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

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

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.

Most People Rush After Pleasure So Fast That They Rush Right Past It.

I Believe That There Is A Longing In My Soul That Searches The Whole World.

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

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.

To Be A Teacher In The Right Sense Is To Be A Learner. I Am Not A Teacher, Only A Fellow Student.

The Reign Of The Tyrant Ends With His Death, And The Reign Of The Martyr Starts With It.

So To Be Sick Unto Death Is, Not To Be Able To Die-yet Not As Though There Were Hope Of Life; No, The Hopelessness In This Case Is That Even The Last Hope, Death, Is Not Available. When Death Is The Greatest Danger, One Hopes For Life; But When One Becomes Acquainted With An Even More Dreadful Danger, One Hopes For Death. So When The Danger Is So Great That Death Has Become One's Hope, Despair Is The Disconsolateness Of Not Being Able To Die.

At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.

...there Is One Thing That All Satan's Cunning And All The Snares Of Temptation Cannot Take By Surprise - An Undivided Will.

Had I To Carve An Inscription On My Tombstone I Would Ask For None Other Than "the Individual."

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.

...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.

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.

Fate, Then, Is The Nothing Of Anxiety.

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.

Take It And Return It: The Kiss Of Love.

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.

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.

Patience Is Necessary, And One Cannot Reap Immediately Where One Has Sown.

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

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.

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.

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

Boredom Is The Root Of All Evil - The Despairing Refusal To Be Oneself.

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

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

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

On The Secretly Blushing Cheek Is Reflected The Glow Of The Heart

Men Who Not Religious Or Artists Are Fools.

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?

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.

If The Ethical - That Is, Social Morality- Is The Highest ... Then No Categories Are Needed Other Than The Greek Philosophical Categories.

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

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

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