KIERKEGAARD54

To you, O God, we turn for peace... but give us also the blessed assurance that nothing can take this peace from us, not we ourselves, not our bad, earthly wishes, my wild desires, not the craving of my restless heart! [July 1840]

Two wills in the world cannot be tolerated. God is the only one. [1854]

Under the pretext of objectivity the aim has been to sacrifice individualities altogether. [1847]

Unhappy artist pair, do you know that these tones are an eptiome of all the glories in the world? [about the song of a few poor street musicians; Either/Or, VOL. I: DIAPSALMATA]

Unselfishness, that would be futile to insist on--so one makes do with a well-concealed, hypocritical self-interest--also a kind of unselfishness; after all, it looks just the same. ["Surrogate, Curious Surrogates",1854]

...wanting to be just like others is a cowardly and complacent dishonesty towards the others. ["Wanting to be Just Like the Others", 1854]

We men are prone by nature to regard life in this way: we consider suffering an evil which in every way we strive to avoid. And if we succeed in this, we think that when our last hour comes we have special reason for thanking God that we have been spared suffering. We think that everything depends upon slipping through this life happily and well--and Christianity thinks that all that is terrible really comes from the other world, that the terrible things of this world are as child's play compared with the terrors of eternity, and that it distinctly does not depend upon slipping through this life happily and well, but upon relation oneself rightly by suffering to eternity. [Attack Upon "Christendom"]

What a great help it would be in Christendom if someone spoke and acted like that: I don't know whether Christianity is true, but I will order my whole life as if it were, stake my life on it--then if it proves not to be true, eh bien I still don't regret my choice, for it is the only thing that concerns me. ["A Socrates in Christendom", 1850]

What an abyss of nonsense and abomination! When something is displeasing to God, does it become well pleasing by the fact that (to make bad worse) a priest takes part who (to make bad worse) gets ten dollars for declaring that it is well pleasing to God? [Attack Upon "Christendom"]

What an extraordinary change takes place when one first learns the rules for the indicative and the subjunctive, when for the first time the fact that everything depends upon how a thing is thought first enters the consciousness, when, in consequence, thought in its abslouteness replaces an apparent reality. [1837]

What confuses everything is this advantage man has over the animal [...]. So dubious is this advantage [...] which, ironically, often means that he is what the animal is not, a babbler or a hypocrite. ["If Only Man Could Not Talk!", 1854]