"Just as in a drama, by shortening the time and condensing the events, one is enabled to see the content of many years in the course of a few hours, so also one wants to arrange oneself dramatically within temporality. God’s plan for existence is rejected, so that temporality is entirely development, complication-eternity the denouement. Everything is arranged within temporality, a score of years devoted to development, then ten years, and then the denouement follow. Undeniably death is also a denouement, and then it is over, one is buried-yet not before the denouement of decomposition has begun. But anyone who refuses to understand that the whole of one’s life should be the time of hope is veritably in despair, no matter, absolutely no matter, whether he is conscious of it or not, whether he counts himself fortunate in his presumed well-being or wears himself out in tedium and trouble. Anyone who gives up the possibility that his existence could be forfeited in the next moment-provided he does not give up this possibility because he hopes for the possibility of the good, anyone who lives without possibility is in despair. He breaks with the eternal and arbitrarily puts an end to possibility; without the consent of eternity, he ends where the end is not, instead of, like someone who is taking dictation, continually having his pen poised for what comes next, so that he does not presume meaninglessly to place a period before the meaning is complete or rebelliously to throw away his pen."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love, 1847, Hong 1995 p. 251-252
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Suicide
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Suicide
102 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Suicide →
Related Quotes
"Suicide kills two people. That's what it's for."
"Those who suppose that after a suicide they will return to the place from which they were sent are indeed mistaken, f…"
"A yogi understands the great harm of the premature ending of one’s own life. A yogi understands to what extent he can…"
"A brave man once requested me To answer questions that are key Is it to be or not to be And I replied oh why ask me"
"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."
"The next place that they came unto Was the meer Barathrum of wo, Where lay a miserable pack Of men that dy'd for hono…"
"There be many excellent straines in that Poet (Lucan), wherewith his Stoicall Genius hath liberally supplyed him; and…"
"Suicide, like any other murder is a sin because it is a sudden disturbance of the harmony of the world. It is a sin b…"
"He That kills himself to avoid misery, fears it, And, at the best, shows but a bastard valour. This life's a fort com…"
"Suicide is a private thing."