KIERKEGAARD30

It's curious how strictly, in a sense, I am being educated. Now and then I am put down into a dark cave where I creep around in agony and pain, see nothing, no way out. Then suddenly a thought awakens in my mind, so vivid that it feels as though I have never had it before, even though it is not an unfamiliar one and I had once been wed to it but only, so to speak, with the left hand, but not also with the right. When it has taken a hold in me I am clapped a little on the shoulder, taken by the arms; and I who had been squashed like a grasshopper then grow up again, healthy, thriving, warm and lively as a newborn babe. Then it's as though I has to pledge to follow this thought to the end; I pledge my life and now I am in harness. I cannot stop and my powers sustain themselves. Then I finish, and it starts all over again. [1843]

It's rather strange with superstition--you would expect a person, once he has seen his morbid dreams fail of fulfilment, to give them up in the future; but on the contrary, the dreams become stronger, just as your desire to gamble increases once you have lost in the lottery. [January 1836]

Just how intimately and essentially the knowledge one has of oneself depends on the knowledge one believes others have of one can be seen from the fact that nearsighted people think that others at a distance cannot see them either. Neither, similarly, does the nearsighted sinner believe that God sees his straying; whereas the devout Christian, since he is known by God, recognizes his own frailty with a clarity which only sharing the seer's eye of the spirit which scrutinizes auguries can procure him. [11 July 1838]

Language distinguishes man from the beast--but perhaps the dumb beast still has the advantage, fo at least it is not cheated, nor cheats itself, out of the highest. [ " 'Man' ", 1854]

Language is an abstraction, everywhere it yields the abstract instead of the concrete. [1849]

Let antiquity answer: idem velle, idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia ["To wish and not to wish the same thing--this at last is firm friendship"], and also extremely tiresome. [Either/Or, VOL. I: THE ROTATION METHOD]

Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is wretched, for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful... This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin. [Either/Or, VOL. I: DIAPSALMATA]

Let the judge be appointed by the state, let the officers of justice work to discover guilt and crime; the rest of us are neither called on to be the judge nor the officer of justice, but on the contrary we are called by God to love, hence by the help of the extenuating explanation, to cover the multitude of sins. [Works of Love]