KIERKEGAARD41

...so the disciple who is born anew owes nothing to any man, but everything to his divine Teacher. And just as the former forgets the world in his discovery of himself, so the latter forgets himself in the discovery of his Teacher. [Philosophical Fragments]

Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the sickness of the soul (sin) does not consume it as sickness of the body consumes the body. So also we can demonstrate the eternal in man from the fact that despair cannot consume his self, that this precisely is the torment of contradiction in despair. If there were nothing eternal in a man, he could not despair; but if despair could consume his self, there would still be no despair. [The Sickness Unto Death]

Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to have answered gravely: "It is granted thee." [Either/Or, VOL. I: DIAPSALMATA]

...spirit is being willing to die, to die from the world.
It is easy to see, incidentally, that dying from the world is suffering to a whole power higher than dying, for to die is just to suffer, while dying from the world is freely to force oneself inot the same suffering; moreover, dying is after all a rather short-lived suffering, while dying from the world lasts a lifetime. ["Being Spirit", 1854]

Spirit is the power a man's comprehension exerts on his life. [1851]

Spirit precisely is this: not to be like others. [Attack Upon "Christendom"]

Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible. This impossible, however, the knight makes possible by expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by waiving his claim to it. [Fear and Trembling]

--Still, it's lucky that language has a number of expressions for balderdash and nonsense. If it didn't, I'd go mad. For what would that prove except that everything people say is gibberish? It's lucky that language is so cultivated in this respect, since that means one can still hope to hear rational discourse occasionally. [1836-7]

Strangely enough, my imagination works best when I'm sitting by myself in a large gathering, where bustle and noise provide a substrate for my will to hold on to its object. [20 December 1837]