KIERKEGAARD43

The despairer understands that it is weakness to take the earthly so much to heart, that it is weakness to despair. But then, instead of veering sharply away from despair to faith, humbling himself before God for his weakness, he is more deeply absorbed in despair and despairs over his weakness. [The Sickness unto Death]

The divine and simple truth is that no one, absolutely no one, can understand him, that the wisest must humbly abide by the same as the plain man. [1846]

The divine invention is one thing, that the only kind of worship God demands is imitation. The one thing man wants is to worship the prototypes. ["Imitation", 1854]

...the dynamometer of eternity, on which every man must be tested as to whether he has faith or not, remains through all hte ages absolutely unchanged. [Works of Love]

The essence of pleasure does not lie in the thing enjoyed, but in the accompanying consciousness. 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 pleasure consists not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way. [Either/Or, VOL. I: DIAPSALMATA]

The eternal is acquired in one way, and the eternal is different from everything else precisely for the fact that it can be acquired only in one single way. [Attack Upon "Christendom"]

The fact that God would create free beings vis-a-vis of himself is the cross which philosophy could not carry, but remained hanging from. [1838]

The fact that I cannot really come out with the full truth about myself means that I am essentially a poet after all--and here I shall remain. [1849]

The fact that men through rumor, through village gossip, are accustomed inquisitively, frivolously, enviously, maliciously perhaps, to learn of their neighbor's faults--that debases men. [Works of Love]

The five, the seven, the fifteen, the eighteen hundred years are neither here nor there; they do not change Him, neither do they in any wise reveal who He was, for who He is is revealed only to faith. [Training in Christianity]

The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.

The "how" of a man's inwardness determines the significance, not the quantitative "what." [Concluding Unscientific Postscript]

The infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith, so that one who has not made this movement has not faith; for only in the infinite resignation do I become clear to myself with respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be any question of grasping existence by virtue of faith. [Fear and Trembling]