The Kierkegaarden

“The lover discovers nothing, hence he conceals the multitude of sins which would be exposed through the discovery. The life of the lover is an expression of the apostolic precept of being a child in malice. That which the world really admires as shrewdness is an understanding of evil; wisdom is essentially the understanding of the good. The lover has no understanding of evil and does not wish to have; he is and remains, he wishes to be and to continue to be, in this respect, a child.”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“If one were to say, ‘Either love or die,’ and thereby mean that a life without love was not worth living, then we should admit that he was absolutely right. But if by this he meant possessing the beloved, and consequently meant, either possess the beloved or die, either gain this friend or die, then we must say that such a love is dependent in a false sense. When love does not make the same demands upon itself that it makes on the object of its love, while it is still dependent on that love, then it is dependent in a false sense: the law of its existence lies outside itself, and hence it is dependent in the corruptible, earthly, temporal sense.”
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~Source: Works Of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“The concept ‘neighbor’ is really a reduplication of your own self; the ‘neighbor’ is what philosophers would call the ‘other,’ the touchstone for  testing what is selfish in self-love. Insofar, for the sake of the thought, it is not even necessary that the neighbor should exist. 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.”
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~Source: Works Of Love (1847)
Author: Soren Kierkegaard

*Commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

“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. A man, on the contrary, you must only — yet, no, this is the highest — you must love a man as yourself; if you can better perceive his best than he can, then you will not be able to excuse yourself by the fact that the harmful thing was his own wish, was what he himself asked for.”
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“Blessed the believer, he believes what he cannot see; blessed the lover, he believes that away which he still can see…Who can believe this? The lover. But why is forgiveness so rare? Is it not because faith in the power of forgiveness is so little and so rare? Even a better man who is by no means inclined to bear malice or spite, and far from being unforgiving, is often heard to say: ‘I could readily forgive him, but I don’t see how that can help.’ Oh, it is not seen! Still, if you have ever yourself needed forgiveness, then you know what forgiveness can do: why do you speak with so little experience or with such unkindness about forgiveness?”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“But when it is a duty to love, there no test is needed and the insulting stupidity of wishing to test is superfluous; since love is higher than any proof, it has already more than met the test, in the same sense that faith ‘more than conquers.’ The very fact of testing always presupposes a possibility; it is still always possible that that which is tested may not meet the test. Hence if someone wished to test whether he has faith, or tried to get faith, then this would really mean that he will hinder himself in aquiring faith; he will become a victim of the restless craving where faith is never won, for ‘thou shalt believe.’”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaar

~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

When Christ said ‘Beware of men,’ I wonder if that warning did not imply this: ‘Beware lest through men, that is, through perpetual comparison with other men, through habit and externalities, you allow yourself to be defrauded of the supreme good.’”

~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard