February 28

February 28, 2010 at 6:54 am (Blooms)
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“To the extent that a person has the truer conception of despair, if he still remains in despair, and to the extent that he is more clearly conscious of being in despair — to that extent the despair is more intensive. The person who, with a realization that suicide is despair and to that extent with a true conception of the nature of despair, commits suicide is more intensively in despair than one who commits suicide without a clear idea that suicide is despair… A person who with a clearer consciousness of himself (self-consciousness) commits suicide is more intensively in despair than one whose soul, by comparison, is in confusion and darkness.”
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~Source: The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Anti-Climacus

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February 27

February 27, 2010 at 8:27 am (Blooms)
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“Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. ‘Will you,’ said Mercury, ‘have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing.’ For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: ‘Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side.’ Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to have answered gravely: ‘It is granted thee.'”
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~Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Victor Eremita

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February 26

February 26, 2010 at 7:37 am (Blooms)
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“Ordinarily everyone who lives in Christendom has unconditionally enough knowledge about Christianity to be able to invoke and supplicate, to be able to turn in prayer to Christ. If he does that with the need of inwardness and in honesty of heart, he surely will become a believer. If only it is altogether definite before God that this person feels the need to believe, he will very definitely find out what he is to believe. The opposite is: without a need to believe, to go on researching, ruminating, and pondering, more and more wanting nigglingly to waste year after year of one’s life, and finally one’s eternal salvation, on getting absolutely and precisely definite, down to a dot over a letter, what one is to believe. This opposite is empty shadowboxing that merely becomes more and more self-important, or it is a scholarly, learned practice in the wrong place, therefore a scholarly, learned malpractice, or it is cowardly, inhuman, and to that extent also ungodly pusillanimity.”
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~Source: Christian Discourses: “He Was Believed in the World” (1848)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

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February 25

February 25, 2010 at 7:07 am (Blooms)
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“The spiritual man is able to endure a duplication in himself: by his understanding he is able to hold fast to the fact that something is contrary to the understanding, and then will it nevertheless: he is able to hold fast with the understanding to the fact that something is an offense, and yet to will it nevertheless; that, humanly speaking, something makes him unhappy, and yet to will it, etc. But the New Testament is composed precisely in view of this.”
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~Source: The Attack Upon Christendom (1854 – 1855)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

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February 24

February 24, 2010 at 6:29 am (Blooms)
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“Presumably the police use a coat of arms portraying a hand with an eye in the middle to show that it has an eye on each finger. But the fact that the eye doesn’t extend to the thumb also means that it has a finger free — when necessary — to cover the eye.”
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~Source: The Journals (1834)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

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February 23

February 23, 2010 at 7:04 am (Blooms)

“Variety was his watchword. Is variety, then, to will one thing that shall ever remain the same? On the contrary, it is to will one thing that must never be the same. It is to will a multitude of things. And a person who wills in this fashion is not only double-minded but is at odds with himself. For such a man will first one thing and then immediately wills the opposite, because oneness of pleasure is a snare and a delusion. It is the diversity of pleasures that he wills.”

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~Source: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing” (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

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February 22

February 22, 2010 at 6:53 am (Blooms)
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“In resignation I make renunciation of everything; this movement I make by myself, and if I do not make it, it is because I am cowardly and effeminate and without enthusiasm and do not feel the significance of the lofty dignity which is assigned to every man, that of being his own censor, which is a far prouder title than that of Censor General to the whole Roman Republic. This movement I make by myself, and what I gain is myself in my eternal consciousness, in blissful agreement with my love for the Eternal Being.”
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~Source: Fear And Trembling (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Johannes De Silentio

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February 21

February 21, 2010 at 7:01 pm (Blooms)
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“Ah, truly, if I did not despise suicide, if I did not feel that all such virtues were glittering vices, I would indeed go back to her — and then end my life, a plan which I am sorry to say has haunted me for a long time, and which would make parting from me doubly hard for her, for who loves like a dying man?”
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~Source: The Journals (1841)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard


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February 20

February 20, 2010 at 8:46 am (Blooms)
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And are there not many people who are like that, who own nothing except in the moment when they show it to others, who grasp only the surface, not the essence, who lose everything if this appears…” ——————————————————– ~Source: Either/Or (1843) Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Victor Eremita

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February 19

February 19, 2010 at 8:25 am (Blooms)
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“Everyone takes his revenge on the world. My revenge consists in bearing my distress and anguish enclosed deeply within me while my laughter entertains everyone. If I see someone suffer I give him my sympathy, console him as best I can, and listen to him calmly when he assures me that I am fortunate. If I can only keep this up until the day I die I shall have had my revenge.”
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~Source: The Journals (1837)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

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