KIERKEGAARD52

This is all I have known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.

This is how I understood myself when talking to myself about it before God. I said: I can no longer bear being so near you, forgive me for drawing back. You are, after all, love; and when I see that closeness to you (in those pains of my heterogeneity) will be continual pain, you will in your 'grace' forgive me, indeed help me slip a little further away from you; for this I understand, the closer one comes to you the more suffering in this life. So you will not be angry and will take care in some other way that when this pain which bound me to you every day and every hour, and reminded me of you, is taken away I do not forget you and in the end turn the whole relation around and delude myself into thinking that the fact that I feel pain no longer is the sign of your greater pleasure, rather than perhaps your displeasure; for as I said, this I understand, the closer I am to you the more pain; oh! but I cannot, you who love, you must allow me to remove myself from you. [" 'Suffering'--About Myself", 1852]

This is why the world makes no progress but is in decline: people consult only with one another instead of each one individually with God. [1848]

This saying is so often heard in the world, "One lives only once; therefore I could wish to see Paris before I die, or to make a fortune as soon as possible, or in fine to become something great in the world--for one lives only once."
More rarely we encounter, but it may be encountered nevertheless, a man who has only one wish, quite definitely only one wish. "This," says he, "I could wish; oh, that my wish might be fulfilled, for alas, one lives only once."
Imagine such a man upon his deathbed. The wish was not fulfilled, but his soul clings unalterably to this wish--and now, now it is no longer possible. Then he raises himself on his bed; with the passion of despair he utters once again his wish: "Oh, despair, it is not fulfilled; despair, one lives only once!"
This seems terrible, and in truth it is, but not as he means it; for the terrible thing is not that the wish remained unfulfilled, the terrible thing is the passion with which he clings to it. His life is not wasted because his wish was not fulfilled, by no manner of means; if his life is wasted, it is because he would not give up his wish, would not learn from life anything higher than this consideration of his only wish, as though its fulfillment or non-fulfillment decided everything. [Attack Upon "Christendom"]

This thing of being born, is it thinkable? Certainly, why not? But for whom is it thinkable, for one who is born, or for one who is not born? This latter supposition is an absurdity which could never have entered anyone's head....When one has experienced birth thinks of himself as born, he conceives this transition from non-being to being. The same principle must also hold in the case of the new birth. Or is the difficulty increased by the fact that the non-being which precedes the new birth contains more being than the non-being which preceded the first birth? But who then may be expected to think the new birth? Surely the man who has himself been born anew, since it would be absurd to imagine that one not so born should think it. Would it not be the height of the ridiculous for such an individual to entertain this notion? [Philosophical Fragments]