The Kierkegaarden

“The immediate love can be changed in itself, it can be changed into its opposite, into hate. Hate is a love which has become its opposite, a love which has perished… As it is said about the tongue, that ‘out of the same mouth proceedeth both blessing and cursing,’ so we must also say that it is the same love which loves and hates; but just because it is the same love, precisely therefore it is not in the eternal sense the true love which remains the same and unchanged, while that immediate love, if it is changed, at bottom is still the same. The true love, which underwent the change of the eternal by becoming duty, is never changed; it is simple, it loves–and never hates, never hates–the beloved”
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~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.'”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“Worldly similarity, if it were possible, is not Christian equality. Moreover, to bring about worldly similarity perfectly is an impossibility. Well-intentioned worldliness actually admits this itself. It rejoices when it succeeds in making temporal conditions the same for more and more people, but it acknowledges itself that its struggle is a pious wish, that it has taken on a prodigious task, that its prospects are remote — if it rightly understood itself, it would perceive that this will never be achieved in temporality, that even if this struggle is continued for centuries, it will never attain its goal.”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“There is indeed a big dispute going on in the world about what should be called the highest. But whatever it is called now, whatever variations there are, it is unbelievable how much prolixity is involved in taking hold of it. Christianity, however, immediately teaches a person the shortest way to find the highest: Shut your door and pray to God — because God is surely the highest. If someone goes out into the world to try to find the beloved or the friend, he can go a long way — and go in vain, can wander the world around — and in vain. But Christianity is never responsible for having a person go even a single step in vain, because when you open the door that you shut in order to pray to God and go out the very first person you meet is the neighbor, whom you shall love.”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“This was the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ but when the commandment is rightly understood it also says the converse, ‘Thou shalt love thyself in the right way.’ If anyone, therefore, will not learn from Christianity to love himself in the right way, then neither can he love his neighbor; he may perhaps, as we say, ‘for life and death’ cling to one or several human beings, but this is by no means loving one’s neighbor. To love one’s self in the right way and to love one’s neighbor are absolutely analogous concepts, are at bottom one and the same.”
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~Source: Works of Love (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“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 Kierkegaard