KIERKEGAARDworks3

If a man lived on a desert island, if he developed his mind in harmony with the commandment, then by renouncing self-love he could be said to love his neighbor.

If someone believes that he has faith and yet is indifferent to his possession, neither cold nor warm, then he can be sure that he does not have faith. If someone believes that he is a Christian and yet is indifferent to the fact that he is, then he truly is not a Christian. What would we think about a man who protested that he was in love, and also stated that it was a matter of indifference to him?

It is like a man's coming into existence: by existing, by becoming a "self," he becomes free, but in the next moment he is dependent on this self. Duty, on the other hand, makes a man dependent and at the same time eternally independent... Alas, we often think that freedom exists, and that is the law which restricts freedom. However, it is just the other way: without law freedom simply does not exist, and it is the law which gives freedom.

...it would never occur to anyone to say about sterling silver that it will stand the test of years, because it is sterling silver. So too with love. The love which merely has continuance, however happy, however blissful, however confident, however poetic it is, must still stand the testing of the years; but the love which underwent the change of eternity through becoming duty, won immutability; it is sterling.

No, the one who lovingly forgets himself, forgets his own suffering to consider another's, forgets all his own wretchedness in order to think of another's misery, forgets what he himself loses in order lovingly to look at another's: truly such a one is not forgotten. There is One who considers him: God in heaven; or love considers him. God is love, and when a man from love forgets himself, and thinks of the other man, God thinks of the lover. The self-lover is busy, he shrieks and shouts, and stands for his rights in order to make certain of not being forgotten--and yet he is forgotten; but the lover who forgets himself, he is remembered by love. There is One who thinks of him, and thereby it comes to pass that the lover gets what he gives.

...now since the Christian relgion has many times been rejected by those who were brought up in it, because they preferred all kinds of novelties, just as wholesome food is refused by a person who has never been hungry, in favor of sweets... how seldom is it considered, how seldom perhaps does a Christian earnestly and with a thankful heart dwell upon the idea of what his condition might have been if Christianity had not come into the world!

Oh, if men would rightly understand what a beautiful use they could make of their imagination, their acuteness, their ingenuity, their ability to co-ordinate by using it in every possible way to discover an extenuating explanation: then would they increasingly taste one of the most beautiful joys in life; it could become to them a passionate pleasure and need, which would cause them to forget everything else.

Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love everlastingly secure against every change; everlastingly emancipated in blessed independence; everlastingly happy, assured against despair.