Stages on Life's Way:
“To be a model of virtue, a bright normative human being, is, for one thing, very embarrassing--and also very dubious.”
“One understands that the single individual has essentially with himself to do, that performance is incidental...”
“Laughter is and continues to be the best method of exploration.”
“...for true earnestness is the unity of jest and earnestness.”
“Away with you, deranged meaninglessness with your grinning mug, make me miserable if there is meaning in it, but do not make me blissful in nonsense.”
“...there is still one thing of which the simplest and the most profound person must, if he talks about it, talk mysteriously--that is: time. Without a doubt, it is the most difficult mystery, just as it is also supposed to be the most profound wisdom, to arrange one’s life as if today were the last day one lives and also the first in a sequence of years.”
“In poetry, therefore, love does not relate to itself but it relates to the world, and this relationship determines whether it becomes unhappy.”
“When love does not stand on its own, this means that, self-given, it does not, as in poetry, have its obstacle outside but has its obstacle within itself.”
“...the difficulties do not arise because love collides with the world but because love must reflect itself in the individuality. The problem is so dialectical that the fact that love provokes resentment in this way can also invite the opposite question: Is love given, then?”
“...there is always something good, after all, in not being trustworthy.”
“If someone were to declare that swimming is lying on dry land and threshing around, everyone presumably would consider him mad. But believing is just like swimming, and instead of helping one ashore the speaker should help one out into the deep. Consequently, if someone were to say that believing is lying on dry land and threshing around certain of result, he is saying the same thing, but perhaps people are not aware of it.”
“Spiritual existence, especially the religious, is not easy; the believer continually lies out on the deep, has 70,000 fathoms of water beneath him. However long he lies out there, this still does not mean that he will gradually end up lying and relaxing onshore. he can become more calm, more experienced, find a confidence that loves jest and a cheerful temperament--but until the very last he lies out on 70,000 fathoms of water.”
“What will decide this? Actuality will. But actuality takes a little time.”
“...to forget guilt is a new sin. This is the difficulty. To hold firmly to guilt is the passion of repentance, and it proudly and enthusiastically scorns the prating of forgetfulness about relief and, troubled, is itself suspicious of it.”
“To be joyful out on 70,000 fathoms of water, many, many miles from all human help--yes, that is something great! To swim in the shallows in the company of waders is not the religious.”
“...when they say ‘Repent of nothing’ with regard to the past, they could with the same right say ‘Deliberate about nothing’ with regard to the future.”
“...every life that is not thoughtless eo ipso indirectly passes judgement.”
The Concept of Anxiety
“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reasons for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down.”
“Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness.”
“...when dealing with the concept of faith the historical is made so one-sidedly significant that the primitive originality of faith in the individual is overlooked, faith becomes a finite pettiness instead of a free infinitude.... Thus a person might become a heretic in his faith by wearing wide pants when everyone else in the village wears tight pants.”
“At the maximum we find here the dreadful fact that anxiety about sin produces sin.”
“To the degree he discovers freedom, to that same degree the anxiety of sin is upon him in the state of possibility. He fears only guilt, for guilt alone can deprive him of freedom. Here it is readily seen that freedom is by no means defiance, nor is it selfish freedom in a finite sense.... No, the opposite of freedom is guilt....”
“The relation of freedom to guilt is anxiety, because freedom and guilt are still only possibilities.”
“Earnestness alone is capable of returning regularly every Sunday with the same originality to the same thing.”
Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses
"One person can do much for another, but he cannot give him faith."
"...how much do we dare to be occupies with the future? The answer is not difficult: only when we have conquered it, only then are we able to return to the present, only then do our lives find meaning in it. But his is indeed impossible."
"The ability to be occupied with the future is, then, a sign of the nobility of human beings; the struggle with the future is the most ennobling. He who struggles with the present struggles with a particular thing against which he can use his total energy. Therefore, if a person had nothing else with which to struggle, it would be possible for him to go victoriously through his whole life without learning to know himself or his power. He who battles with the future has a more dangerous enemy; he cannot remain ignorant of himself, since he is battling with himself. The future is not; it borrows its power from him himself."
"No matter how strong a person is, no person is stronger than himself."
"...then I perceive that not only the person who expects absolutely nothing does not have faith, but also the person who expects something particular or who bases his expectancy on something particular."
"It is beautiful that a person prays, and many a promise is given to the one who prays without ceasing, but it is more blessed always to give thanks."
"...but what one sees depends upon how one sees; all observation is not just a receiving, a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive."
"An elderly pagan, named and acclaimed in paganism as a sage, was sailing with an ungodly man on the same ship. When the ship was in distress at sea, the ungodly man lifted up his voice to pray, but the sage said to him, 'Be quiet, dear fellow. If heaven discovers that you are on board, the ship will capsize.'"
"...the punishment of sin breeds new sin, but love hides a multitude of sins."
"...in every human heart God's love awakens crying like a newborn baby, not smiling like the child that knows its mother."
"Only of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was man not allowed to eat--lest the knowledge should enter the world and bring grief along with it: the pain of want and the dubious happiness of possession, the terror of separation and the difficulty of separation, the disquietude of deliberation and the worry of deliberation, the distress of choice and the decision of choice..."
"...the only good and perfect gift a human being can give is love..."
Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses
"One person can do much for another, but he cannot give him faith."
"...how much do we dare to be occupies with the future? The answer is not difficult: only when we have conquered it, only then are we able to return to the present, only then do our lives find meaning in it. But his is indeed impossible."
"The ability to be occupied with the future is, then, a sign of the nobility of human beings; the struggle with the future is the most ennobling. He who struggles with the present struggles with a particular thing against which he can use his total energy. Therefore, if a person had nothing else with which to struggle, it would be possible for him to go victoriously through his whole life without learning to know himself or his power. He who battles with the future has a more dangerous enemy; he cannot remain ignorant of himself, since he is battling with himself. The future is not; it borrows its power from him himself."
"No matter how strong a person is, no person is stronger than himself."
"...then I perceive that not only the person who expects absolutely nothing does not have faith, but also the person who expects something particular or who bases his expectancy on something particular."
"It is beautiful that a person prays, and many a promise is given to the one who prays without ceasing, but it is more blessed always to give thanks."
"...but what one sees depends upon how one sees; all observation is not just a receiving, a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive."
"An elderly pagan, named and acclaimed in paganism as a sage, was sailing with an ungodly man on the same ship. When the ship was in distress at sea, the ungodly man lifted up his voice to pray, but the sage said to him, 'Be quiet, dear fellow. If heaven discovers that you are on board, the ship will capsize.'"
"...the punishment of sin breeds new sin, but love hides a multitude of sins."
"...in every human heart God's love awakens crying like a newborn baby, not smiling like the child that knows its mother."
"Only of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was man not allowed to eat--lest the knowledge should enter the world and bring grief along with it: the pain of want and the dubious happiness of possession, the terror of separation and the difficulty of separation, the disquietude of deliberation and the worry of deliberation, the distress of choice and the decision of choice..."
"...the only good and perfect gift a human being can give is love..."
I love the first quote of each section! Those are great choices.
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