KIERKEGAARDworks2

Despair is, namely, not something which may happen to a man, an event like fortune and misfortune. Despair is a disproportion in his inmost being--so far down, so deep, that neither fate nor events can encroach upon it, but can only reveal the fact that the disproportion--was there. Therefore there is only one assurance against despair: to undergo the change of eternity by the "shalt" of duty; anyone who has not understood this change is desperate; fortune and prosperity may conceal it; misfortune and adversity, on the contrary, do not, as he thinks, make him desperate, but they reveal the fact that he--was desperate.

Every event, every word, every act, in short everything, may be explained in many ways; as someone has falsely said that clothes make the man, so one can truly say that the explanation makes the object of the explanation into what it is. As regards another man's words, deeds, modes of thought, and so on, there is no such certainty, so that to accept them really indicates choosing. The interpretation, the explanation is therefore, just because a different explanation is possible, a choice.

For God's wisdom is incomparable with respect to your own, and God's providence is not obliged to be responsible for your cleverness. You have only to obey in love.

Forgetting, when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating; for creating is bringing forth from nothing; forgetting is resolving back into nothing. What is hidden before my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. And just in this way does the lover forgive: he forgives, he forgets, he erases the sin; affectionately he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him he cannot see what is lying behind his back.

He to whom I have an obligation is my neighbor, and when I fulfill my obligation I show that I am his neighbor.

However glad, however happy, however indescribably confident the love of impulse and inclination, the immediate love as such, can be, it still feels, even in its most beautiful moment, a need to bind itself if possible even more closely. Therefore the two take an oath; they take an oath of loyalty or friendship to each other; and when we speak most solemnly, we do not say about the two, "They love one another"; we say, "They swore fidelity to each other," or "They took an oath of friendship to each other." But by what does this love swear?...It is the poet who exacts a promise from the two, the poet who unites the two, the poet who dictates an oath to the two and lets them take it; in short, it is the poet who is the priest. Does this love then swear by something that is higher than itself? No, it does not. This is what exactly constitutes the beautiful, the moving, the mysterious, the poetical misunderstanding, that the two do not themselves discover it; and precisely because of this, the poet is their only, their beloved confidant, because neither does he discover it.

I believe that the visible has come into existence from that which is not seen; I see the world, but the invisible I do not see, I believe it.

If a believer were to implore God to put his faith to the test, then this is not an indication of the believer's having faith to an extraordinary degree (to think that is a poetic misunderstanding, as it is also a misunderstanding to have faith to an "extraordinary" degree, since the ordinary degree of faith is the highest), but it indicates that he does not quite have faith, for "thou shalt believe."