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What I Really Need Is To Get Clear About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Must Precede Every Act. What Matters Is To Find A Purpose, To See What It Really Is That God Wills That I Shall Do; The Crucial Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is Truth For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Am Willing To Live And Die.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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What I Really Need

Soren Kierkegaard

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What I Really Need Is To Get Clear About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Must Precede Every Act. What Matters Is To Find A Purpose, To See What It Really Is That God Wills That I Shall Do; The Crucial Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is Truth For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Am Willing To Live And Die.

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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.

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

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.

Only The Noble Of Heart Are Called To Difficulty.

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.

The Function Of Prayer Is Not To Influence God, But Rather To Change The Nature Of The One Who Prays.

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.

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

Spiritual Superiority Only Sees The Individual. But Alas, Ordinarily We Human Beings Are Sensual And, Therefore, As Soon As It Is A Gathering, The Impression Changes - We See Something Abstract, The Crowd, And We Become Different. But In The Eyes Of God, The Infinite Spirit, All The Millions That Have Lived And Now Live Do Not Make A Crowd, He Only Sees Each Individual.

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.

In Order To Learn True Humility (i Use This Expression To Describe The State Of Mind Under Discussion), It Is Good For A Person To Withdraw From The Turmoil Of The World (we See That Christ Withdrew When The People Wanted To Proclaim Him King As Well As When He Had To Walk The Thorny Path), For In Life Either The Depressing Or The Elevating Impression Is Too Dominant For A True Balance To Come About. Here, Of Course, Individuality Is Very Decisive.

The Object Of (christian) Faith Is Not The Teaching But The Teacher.

Happiness Is The Greatest Hiding Place For Despair.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Do Not Interrupt The Flight Of Your Soul; Do Not Distress What Is Best In You; Do Not Enfeeble Your Spirit With Half Wishes And Half Thoughts. Ask Yourself And Keep On Asking Until You Find The Answer, For One May Have Known Something Many Times, Acknowledged It; One May Have Willed Something Many Times, Attempted It - And Yet, Only The Deep Inner Motion, Only The Heart's Indescribable Emotion, Only That Will Convince You That What You Have Acknowledged Belongs To You, That No Power Can Take It From You - For Only The Truth That Builds Up Is Truth For You.

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

It Is So Hard To Believe Because It Is So Hard To Obey.

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.

A Curiously Interested Observer Sees A Great Deal, A Scientifically Interested Observer Is Worthy Of All Honor, And Anxiously Interested Observer Sees What Others Do Not See, But A Crazy Observer Sees Perhaps The Most, His Observation Is More Intense And More Persistent, Just As The Senses Of Certain Animals Are Sharper Than Those Of Man.

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?

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

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

My Standpoint Is Armed Neutrality.

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

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.

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

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

A Genius May Perhaps Be A Century Ahead Of His Age And Hence Stands There As A Paradox, But In The End, The Race Will Assimilate What Was Once A Paradox, So It Is No Longer Paradoxical.

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?

Death Cannot Explain Itself. The Earnestness Consists Precisely In This, That The Observer Must Explain It To Himself.

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

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

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.

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.

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

...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

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?

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

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.

No Grand Inquisitor Has In Readiness Such Terrible Tortures As Has Anxiety And No Spy Knows How To Attack More Artfully The Man He Suspects, Choosing The Instant When He Is Weakest; Nor Knows How To Lay Traps Where He Will Be Caught And Ensnared As Anxiety Knows How, And No Sharp-witted Judge Knows How To Interrogate, To Examine The Accused, As Anxiety Does, Which Never Lets Him Escape.

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.

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

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

Without Risk, Faith Is An Impossibility.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Would Rather Be A Swineherd, Understood By The Swine, Than A Poet Misunderstood By Men.

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.

It Is Not The Path Which Is The Difficulty; Rather, It Is The Difficulty Which Is The Path.

To Pace About, Looking To Obtain Status, Looking To Attain 'importance' - I Can Think Of Nothing More Ridiculous.

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.

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

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

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.

A Human Being Is A Spirit. But What Is Spirit? Spirit Is The Self. But What Is Self? The Self Is A Relation That Relates Itself To Itself Or Is The Relation's Relating Itself To Itself In The Relation.

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.

Repetition Is The Reality And The Seriousness Of Life.

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.

To Dare Is To Lose One's Footing Momentarily. Not To Dare Is To Lose Oneself.

A Man Who Cannot Seduce Men Cannot Save Them Either.

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

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

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.

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.

Teach Me, 0 God, Not To Torture Myself, Not To Make A Martyr Out Of Myself Through Stifling Reflection, But Rather Teach Me To Breathe Deeply In Faith.

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.

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.

What Is A Poet? An Unhappy Man Who Hides Deep Anguish In His Heart, But Whose Lips Are So Formed That When The Sigh And Cry Pass Through Them, It Sounds Like Lovely Music.... And People Flock Around The Poet And Say: 'sing Again Soon' - That Is, 'may New Sufferings Torment Your Soul But Your Lips Be Fashioned As Before, For The Cry Would Only Frighten Us, But The Music, That Is Blissful.

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

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

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.

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

What I Really Need Is To Get Clear Out About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Precedes Every Act.

I 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.

Philosophy Is Life's Dry-nurse, Who Can Take Care Of Us - But Not Suckle Us.

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?

I Have Attacked No One As Not Being A Christian, I Have Condemned No One.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Are You Not Aware That There Comes A Midnight Hour When Everyone Must Unmask...

. . .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.

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.

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.

The Minority Is Always Stronger Than The Majority, Because The Minority Is Generally Formed By Those Who Really Have An Opinion.

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

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.

Irony Is A Qualification Of Subjectivity.

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.

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

Faith Is Holding Onto Uncertainties With Passionate Conviction.

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

If You Want To Be Loathsome To God, Just Run With The Herd.

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.

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.

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

The Idea Of Demonstrating That This Unknown Something [god] Exists, Could Scarcely Suggest Itself To Reason. For If God Does Not Exist It Would Of Course Be Impossible To Prove It, And If He Does Exist It Would Be Folly To Attempt It.

Genius, Like A Thunderstorm, Comes Up Against The Wind.

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.

...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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

To The Frivolous Christianity Is Certainly Not Glad Tidings, For It Wishes First Of All To Make Them Serious.

Worldly Wisdom Thinks That Love Is A Relationship Between Man And Man. Christianity Teaches That Love Is A Relationship Between Man-god-man, That Is, That God Is The Middle Term.

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.

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.

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

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

The More One Suffers, The More, I Believe, Has One A Sense For The Comic. It Is Only By The Deepest Suffering That One Acquires True Authority In The Use Of The Comic, An Authority Which By One Word Transforms As By Magic The Reasonable Creature One Calls Man Into A Caricature.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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

What I Really Need Is To Get Clear About What I Must Do, Not What I Must Know, Except Insofar As Knowledge Must Precede Every Act. What Matters Is To Find A Purpose, To See What It Really Is That God Wills That I Shall Do; The Crucial Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is Truth For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Am Willing To Live And Die.

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.

Since Boredom Advances And Boredom Is The Root Of All Evil, No Wonder, Then, That The World Goes Backwards, That Evil Spreads. This Can Be Traced Back To The Very Beginning Of The World. The Gods Were Bored; Therefore They Created Human Beings.

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

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

You Will Regret

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.

In The Eyes Of God, The Infinite Spirit, All The Millions That Have Lived And Now Live Do Not Make A Crowd. He Only Sees Each Individual

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

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

The Gods Were Bored And So They Created Man. Adam Was Bored Because He Was Alone, So Eve Was Created. Thus Boredom Entered The World, And Increased In Proportion To The Increase In Population. Adam Was Bored Alone, Then Adam And Eve Were Bored Together; Them Adam And Eve And Cain And Abel Were Bored En Famille; Then The Population Of The World Increased, And The People Were Bored En Masse.

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

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

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

To Love Another Person Is To Help Them Love God.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To Stand On One Leg And Prove God's Existence Is A Very Different Thing From Going On One's Knees And Thanking 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.

The More A Person Limits Himself, The More Resourceful He Becomes.

To Be A Saint Is To Will The One Thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Your Own Tactic Is To Train Yourself In The Art Of Becoming Enigmatic To Everybody. My Young Friend, Suppose There Was No One Who Troubld Himself To Guess Your Riddle--what Joy, Then, Would You Have In It?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

My Life Is Absolutely Meaningless. When I Consider The Different Periods Into Which It Falls, It Seems Like The Word Schnur In The Dictionary, Which Means In The First Place A String, In The Second, A Daughter-in-law. The Only Thing Lacking Is That The Word Schnur Should Mean In The Third Place A Camel, In The Fourth, A Dust-brush.

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.

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.

Take A Book, The Poorest One Written, But Read It With The Passion That It Is The Only Book You Will Read. Ultimately, You Will Read Everything Out Of It, That Is, As Much As There Was In Yourself, And You Could Never Get More Out Of Reading, Even If You Read The Best Of Books.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

Where Am I? Who Am I? How Did I Come To Be Here? What Is This Thing Called The World? How Did I Come Into The World? Why Was I Not Consulted? And If I Am Compelled To Take Part In It, Where Is The Director? I Want To See Him.

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

When You Were Called, Did You Answer Or Did You Not? Perhaps Softly And In A Whisper?

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.

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.

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

Faith Is The Highest Passion In A Man.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

The Human Race In The Course Of Time Has Taken The Liberty Of Softening And Softening Christianity Until At Last We Have Contrived To Make It Exactly The Opposite Of What It Is In The New Testament.

The Truth 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.

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.

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.

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.

...knowing God Is The Condition For The Sanctification Of A Human Being By God's Assistance And According To His Intention. Wherever God Is, There He Is Always Creating... He Wants To Create A New Human Being. To Need God Is To Become New. And To Know God Is The Crucial Thing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Critical Thinking

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.

It Is Perhaps The Misfortune Of My Life That I Am Interested In Far Too Much But Not Decisively In Any One Thing; All My Interests Are Not Subordinated In One But Stand On An Equal Footing.

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Robert Pattinson

Buenaventura Durruti

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