KIERKEGAARD55

What did people want? They wanted to throw off all authority. Fine! Here then is the punishment, and as always the punishment fits the crime. You shall be free! And when, perhaps in despair, you lie on your deathbed and would give everything to have someone with authority reassure you--no, my friend, now it is too late, you did not want authority--and for that reason there is none. ["For Orientation on Christian Problems", 1854]

What does the one who refuses forgiveness do? He increases the sin, he makes it seem greater. And next, forgiveness takes the life from the sin; but denying forgiveness nourishes the sin. Therefore, even if no new sin appears, if the same old sin still persists, the multitude of sins is really increased. When a sin persists, a new sin really comes, for sin increases through sin; the fact that sin persists is really a new sin. [Works of Love]

What does the soul find so recuperative about reading fairy-tales? When I am tired of everything and "full of days," fairy-tales are for me always a refreshing bath that proves so beneficial. There all earthly, all finite cares vanish; joy, yes, sorrow even, are infinite. [26 December 1837]

What I lack is physical energy--to be lazy. My energy is spiritual and all I can do with it is work. [1847]

What I really lack is a body and the physical requirements. [9 June 1847]

What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, or seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. [Gilleleje, 1 August 1835]

What is a witness? A witness is someone who directly demonstrates the truth of the doctrine he proclaims--directly, yes partly by its being truth within him, and blessedness, partly by his volunteering his personal self on the spur of the moment and saying: See, now, if you can force me to deny this doctrine. Through this struggle in which the witness perhaps physically succumbs--may indeed die--the doctrine triumphs. ["Christendom", 1850]

What is education? I should suppose that education was the curriculum one had to run through in order to catch up with oneself. [Fear and Trembling]

What is the good of a velvet armchair when the rest of the environment doesn't correspond with it? It is as if a man were to walk naked wearing a cocked hat. ["Repetition: An Essay on Experimental Psychology"]

What is true of the relation between two men is not true of the relation of man to God: that the longer they live together and the better they get to know each other, the closer do they come to one another. The very opposite is true in relation to God: the longer one lives with Him, the more infinite He becomes--and the smaller one becomes oneself. Alas, as a child it seemed as though God and man could play together. Alas, in youth one dreamed that if one really tried with all the passion of a man in love...the relationship might yet be brought into being. Alas, as a man discovers how infinite God is, and the infinite distance. This is the education.