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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.

-Soren Kierkegaard

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When You Say 'yes'

Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

Truth Has Always Had Many Loud Proclaimers, But The Question Is Whether A Person Will In The Deepest Sense Acknowledge The Truth, Allow It To Permeate His Whole Being, Accept All Its Consequences, And Not Have An Emergency Hiding Place For Himself And A Judas Kiss For The Consequence.

Truth Always Rests With The Minority, And The Minority Is Always Stronger Than The Majority, Because The Minority Is Generally Formed By Those Who Really Have An Opinion, While The Strength Of A Majority Is Illusory, Formed By The Gangs Who Have No Opinion - And Who, Therefore, In The Next Instant (when It Is Evident That The Minority Is The Stronger) Assume Its Opinion ... While Truth Again Reverts To A New Minority.

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

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.

I Have Only One Confidant, And That Is The Silence Of Night.

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.

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

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

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

Critical Moments

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Why I So Much Prefer Autumn To Spring Is That In The Autumn One Looks At Heaven--in The Spring At The Earth.

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.

Above All, Do Not Lose Your Desire To Walk.

Hope Is A Passion For The Possible.

My Scholarly Expectation Is Then That I May Succeed In Becoming Clever In Philosophy In Spite Of My Stupidity.

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.

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.

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

To Venture Causes Anxiety. Not To Venture Is To Lose Oneself.

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.

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

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

Men Are Not On Such Intimate Terms With The Sublime That They Really Can Believe In It

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

Intelligence Has Got The Upper Hand To Such An Extent That It Transforms The Real Task Into An Unreal Trick And Reality Into A Play.

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.

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

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

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

You Will Regret

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

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.

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?

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 .

Happiness Is The Greatest Hiding Place For Despair.

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

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.

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.

At The Bottom Of Enmity Between Strangers Lies Indifference.

Christ Has Not Only Spoken To Us By His Life But Has Also Spoken For Us By His Death.

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

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.

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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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.

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

If I Am Capable Of Grasping God Objectively, I Do Not Believe, But Precisely Because I Cannot Do This I Must Believe.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Love Believes All Things And Yet Is Never Deceived.

It Is A Wonderful Thing To See A First-rate Philosopher At Prayer. Tough-minded Thinking And Tenderhearted Reverence Are Friends, Not Enemies. We Have For Too Long Separated The Head From The Heart, And We Are The Lesser For It. We Love God With The Mind And We Love God With The Heart. In Reality, We Are Descending With The Mind Into The Heart And There Standing Before God In Ceaseless Wonder And Endless Praise. As The Mind And The Heart Work In Concert, A Kind Of Loving Rationality Pervades All We Say And Do. This Brings Unity To Us And Glory To God.

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.

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.

Whoever Thou Art, Whatever In Other Respects Thy Life May Be, My Friend, By Ceasing To Take Part (if Ordinarily Thou Doest) In The Public Worship Of God, As It Now Is (with The Claim That It Is The Christianity Of The New Testament), Thou Hast Constantly One Guilt The Less, And That A Great One: Thou Dost Not Take Part In Treating God As A Fool By Calling That The Christianity Of The New Testament Which Is Not The Christianity Of The New Testament.

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.

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.

People Understand Me So Poorly That They Don't Even Understand My Complaint About Them Not Understanding Me.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

God Does Not Think; He Creates. He Does Not Exist; He Is Eternal.

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

I Am Convinced That God Is Love, This Thought Has For Me A Primitive Lyrical Validity. When It Is Present To Me, I Am Unspeakably Blissful, When It Is Absent, I Long For It More Vehemently Than Does The Lover For His Object.

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

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

If I Had A Humble Spirit In My Service Who, When I Asked For A Glass Of Water, Brought Me The World's Costliest Wines Blended In A Chalice, I Should Dismiss Him, In Order To Teach Him That My Pleasure Consists, Not In What I Enjoy, But In Having My Own Way.

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.

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.

Life Has Its Own Hidden Forces Which You Can Only Discover By Living.

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.

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.

To Grumble About The World And Its Unhappiness Is Always Easier Than To Beat One's Breast And Groan Over Oneself.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Men Who Not Religious Or Artists Are Fools.

Be That Self Which One Truly Is.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Destroy Your Primitivity, And You Will Most Probably Get Along Well In The World, Maybe Achieve Great Success--but Eternity Will Reject You. Follow Up Your Primitivity, And You Will Be Shipwrecked In Temporality, But Accepted By Eternity.

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.

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

Future Is Everything That Past Has Forgotten.

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.

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.

Once You Are Born In This World You’re Old Enough To Die.

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

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

Repetition Is The Reality And The Seriousness Of Life.

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

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.

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.

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

Whoever Has The World's Treasures Has Them No Matter How He Got Them. In The World Of The Spirit It Is Otherwise.

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.

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.

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!

If I Am Capable Of Grasping God Objectively, I Do Not Believe, But Precisely Because I Cannot Do This I Must Believe. If I Wish To Preserve Myself In Faith I Must Constantly Be Intent Upon Holding Fast The Objective Uncertainty So As To Remain Out Upon The Deep, Over Seventy Thousand Fathoms Of Water, Still Preserving My Faith.

Nothing Is As Heady As The Wine Of Possibility

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

The Great Trick With A Woman Is To Get Rid Of Her While She Think's She's Rid Of You.

We Live As If We Were Unaware Of Our Impending Destruction

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.

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

The Conclusions Of Passion Are The Only Reliable Ones.

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

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.

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

It Is Intelligent To Ask Two Questions: (1) Is It Possible? (2) Can I Do It?. But It Is Unintelligent To Ask These Questions: (1) Is It Real? (2) Has My Neighbor Done It?

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

To The Christian, Love Is The Works Of Love. To Say That Love Is A Feeling Or Anything Of The Kind Is An Unchristian Conception Of Love. That Is The Aesthetic Definition And Therefore Fits The Erotic And Everything Of That Nature. But To The Christian Love Is The Works Of Love. Christ's Love Was Not An Inner Feeling, A Full Heart And What Not, It Was The Work Of Love Which Was His Life.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Old Age Realizes The Dreams Of Youth: Look At Dean Swift; In His Youth He Built An Asylum For The Insane, In His Old Age He Was Himself An Inmate.

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

There Can Be No Faith Without Risk.

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

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.

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.

The Door To Happiness Opens Outward.

...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.

Life Is Lived Forwards, But Understood Backwards.

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 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.

Humor (is) Intrinsitc To Christianity.

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.

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.

It Is A Frightful Satire And An Epigram On The Modern Age That The Only Use It Knows For Solitude Is To Make It A Punishment, A Jail Sentence.

In Actuality, No One Ever Sank So Deep That He Could Not Sink Deeper, And There May Be One Or Many Who Sank Deeper. So It Is Always Possible To Be Happy And Grateful That Things Are Not Worse!

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.

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

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.

The Highest Of All Is Not To Understand The Highest But To Act Upon It.

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.

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.

Every Day I Walk Myself Into A State Of Well-being And Walk Away From Every Illness; I Have Walked Myself Into My Best Thoughts.

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.

It Is Very Important In Life To Know When Your Cue Comes.

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.

The Thing Is To Understand Myself: The Thing Is To Find A Truth Which Is True For Me, To Find The Idea For Which I Can Live And Die. That Is What I Now Recognize As The Most Important Thing.

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.

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.

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.

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