Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions

"… this little book […] seeks that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader, or it does not even seek him. Unaware of the time and the hour, it quietly waits for that right reader to come like the bridegroom and to bring the occasion along with him. Let each do a share-the reader therefore more."

"Father in heaven, how well we know that seeking always has its promise; how much the more, then, seeking you, the giver of all the promises and of all good gifts! How well we know that the seeker does not always need to wander out into the world, because the more holy that is which he seeks, the closer it is to him, and if he seeks you, O God, you are closest of all to him! But we also know that seeking always has its toil and its spiritual trial-how much more, then, the terror in seeking you, you Mighty One!"

"Whoever says that this stillness does not exist is merely making noise."

"If anyone has the task of preaching or teaching others about their guilt, of teaching-something that this discourse, which is without authority, does not do-he does have the consolation that the purest heart is precisely the one most willing to comprehend his own guilt most deeply."

"Alas, although there come to be more and more who know so very much, experienced people are becoming more and more rare!"

"The wedding ceremony is like a wreath of eternity, but love weaves it, and duty says it must be woven; and love’s delight is to weave it, and duty says it must be woven-every day from the flower of the moment. Here eternity is not finished with time, but the covenant is eternity’s beginning in time; the eternal resolution and the duty for eternity must remain with the wedded pair in the union of love through time, and there is be celebration at its remembrance and power in its recollection and hope in its promise."

"Death does not have the power to create unhappiness."

"There is a government loan officer where the poor can go. The indigent person is helped, but do the poor have a joyful conception of this loan office? Likewise, there perhaps are marriages that seek God only in adversity, alas, and seek him as a loan office; and anyone who only then seeks him always runs this danger. Would such a late resolution, which even though worthy is still not bought at the last moment without shame and without great danger-would it be more beautiful and wiser than the first resolution of marriage?"

"The person who is without God in the world soon becomes bored with himself-and expresses this haughtily by being bored with all life, but the person who is in fellowship with God indeed lives with the one whose presence gives infinite significance to even the most insignificant."

"Time also is a good."

"Earnestness understands the same thing about death but understands it in a different way. It understands that death makes all equal, and this it has already understood, because earnestness has taught it to seek before God the equality in which all are able to be equal."

"See, one can have an opinion about remote events, about a natural object, about nature, about scholarly works, and about another human being, and so on about much else, and when one expresses this opinion the wise person can decide whether it is correct or incorrect."