Works By S Ren Kierkegaard

"By the sensuous, the flesh, Christianity understands selfishness. A conflict between spirit and flesh is inconceivable unless there is a rebellious spirit on the side of flesh, with which the spirit then contends; similarly, a conflict between spirit and a stone or between spirit and a tree is inconceivable."

"There are a you and an I, and there is no mine and yours! For without a you and an I, there is no love, and with mine and yours there is no love but “mine” and “yours” (these possessive pronouns) are, of course, formed from a “you” and an “I” and as a consequence seem obliged to be present wherever there are a you and an I. This is indeed the case everywhere, but not in love , which is a revolution from the ground up. The more profound the revolution, the more completely the distinction “mine and yours” disappears, and the more perfect is the love."

"The life of the one who loves expresses the apostolic injunction to be a child in evil. What the world actually admires as sagacity is knowledge of evil—whereas wisdom is knowledge of the good. The one who loves does not have and does not want to have knowledge of evil; in this regard he is and remains, he wants to be and wants to remain, a child. Put a child in a den of thieves (but the child must not remain there so long that it is corrupted itself); that is, let it remain there only for a very brief time. Then let it come home and tell everything it has experienced. You will note that the child, who is a good observer and has an excellent memory (as does every child), will tell everything in the greatest detail, yet in such a way that in a certain sense the most important is omitted. Therefore someone who does not know that the child has been among thieves would least suspect it on the basis of the child’s story. What is it, then, that the child leaves out, what is it that the child has not discovered? It is the evil. Yet the child’s story about what it has seen and heard is entirely accurate. What, then, does the child lack? What is it that so often makes a child’s story the most profound mockery of the adults? It is knowledge of evil, that the child lacks knowledge of evil, that the child does not even feel inclined to want to be knowledgeable about evil. In this the one who loves is like the child."

"If someone wants to walk without hardships, he can, of course, do so; but then he also walks along another road-which is his business. But doubt cannot seize hold of the sufferer and make him doubtful with the thought that others are walking along the same road without hardships."

"Spiritually understood, temporality and eternity are two magnitudes that are to be weighed."

"The greatest difficulty seems to be just to get the task firmly set or actually to get set firmly on what the task is."

"There is an authorized language a universal, generally accepted metaphor that compares life to a road."

"Luther has said somewhere that a Christian has to wear the royal court dress of the cross, but I wonder if a Christian ought not also to be practiced in speaking, and to practice so as to be able to speak, the heavenly court language with all his heart. Gabbily to gush about the glory of eternal happiness is empty and foolish talk, but with closed lips, as it were, instead of speaking directly about eternal happiness, by speaking in another way about one’s hardships in life, to show that one is speaking about eternal happiness-that is the language of the royal court."

"If one imagined a crowd of young people, each one wishing, one would find out by means of the wishes to what extent there was something deeper in the individual’s soul, because there is no mirror as accurate as the wish. Although in other respects a mirror sometimes flatters the person looking into it, shows him different from what he actually is, we must say that the wish, aided by possibility, flatteringly beguiles him to disclose himself entirely as he is, beguiles him to look exactly like himself."

"Guilty? Not guilty? This is the earnest question in legal proceedings."

"Paganism wanted to treat the Christians as criminals, and then (as several of the Church fathers so clearly and penetratingly spelled out) it wanted them to admit and confess, not their guilt, as is otherwise the case with criminals, but on the contrary demanded of the Christians that he confess that he was not a Christian."

"Life issues from the heart, and if a person’s heart suffers damage, then by his own fault there is no longer any task for him except the sedulous toil of sin and emptiness; but from the heart of God issues the life in everything, the life in the tasks. If it is so that the creature must die if God withdraws his breath, then it is also true that if God for one single moment has denied his love, then all tasks are dead and reduced to nothing, and hopelessness is the only thing there is."

"These Christian discourses (which in more than one respect are not, and thus for more than one reason are not called, sermons) are not intended “to fill an idle moment for inquisitiveness.” If, however, just one single sufferer, who perhaps is also going astray in many thoughts, should by means of them find a heavy moment lighter, should find in them a trail leading through the many thoughts, then the author will not regret his intention with them. It is “The Gospel of Sufferings,” not as though the subject were exhausted by these discourses but because each discourse is a draught of this, praise God, inexhaustible supply, not as though the particular discourse were exhaustive but because each discourse still drinks deeply enough to find the joy. S.K. p. 215"

"Just as the name of Christ is the one and only name in heaven and on earth, so also is Christ the one and only predecessor who has gone ahead in this way. Between heaven and earth there is only one road: to follow Christ. In time and eternity there is only one choice, one single choice: to choose this road. There is only one eternal hope on this earth: to follow Christ into heaven. There is one blessed joy in this life: to follow Christ; in death there is one final blessed joy-to follow Christ to life!"

"But the proper beginning begins with seeking God’s kingdom first; thus it begins expressly by letting the world perish. What a difficult beginning! How this earthly life begins for a human being we cannot say for sure; it was begun unnoticed, and a human being avoids the difficulty of the beginning. But living for the eternal begins with seeking God’s kingdom first. There is no time to amass a fortune beforehand, no time to deliberate on this question; there is no time to lay up a penny beforehand, because the beginning is: to seek God’s kingdom first."

"If a girl femininely has just one single wish, alas, but hidden in hopelessness, she can then say: It is impossible. This utterance can signify that she has become apathetic, that she wants to go to bed, wants to sleep off her wish, to sleep herself into oblivion; it can signify that she no longer wants to hide her wish in hopelessness."

"When the eyes are staring, they are looking fixedly ahead, are continually looking at one thing, and yet they are not actually seeing, because, as science explains, the eyes see their own seeing. But when the physician says: Move your eyes. And thus the Gospel says: Divert your mind-look down at the lily and quit staring at the worry."

"We have now discussed how the Christian carries the heavy burden lightly, how he is not different from others by being exempted from the burden but is Christian in carrying it lightly. The one who carries the beneficial yoke, and the one who heavily burdened, carries the light burden-that one is a Christian."

"If you are perhaps suffering for a conviction, or if you are preparing to suffer for a conviction, or if you are seriously considering what can happen to a person, then rejoice for a moment in the joy that it was the theme of this discourse; but do not make a mistake, do not indulge in the joy. Instead, earnestly strive to win bold confidence before God and then the joy will come all the more richly to you. A conviction is not something one should rush to bring out in the world. Alas, much confusion has been created and great harm done because an immature person has brought out an immature conviction. No, just allow the conviction to grow quietly, but let it grow together with bold confidence before God. Then, whatever danger befalls you, you will be convinced of what bold confidence is able to do."

"Allow us to mention a great example who actually can be said to have honored what it means to work-the Apostle Paul. If anyone at all might have wished the whole day to be twice as long-then certainly Paul; if anyone at all could have given every hour great meaning for many-then certainly Paul; if anyone at all could easily have been supported by the congregations-then certainly Paul; and yet he preferred to work with his own hands!"

"So go with God to God. Continually take that one step more, that one step, which even the person who cannot move a limb can take, the one step that even the confined prisoner, even the chained prisoner whose foot is not free can take – and in the decision you are with the good. No one, not even the greatest person who has ever lived, can do more then you."

"For many people it seems impossible to unite freedom and suffering in the same thought."

"Change was what he called for when pleasure served him- change, change: and change was what he called for when he arrived at the limits of pleasure, when the servants were exhausted-change, change!"

"Prayer: Father in heaven! From you come only good and perfect gifts. It must also be beneficial to comply with the counsel and teaching of whomever you have appointed as a teacher of human beings, as a counselor to the worried. Grant, then, that the one who is worried may truly learn from the divinely appointed teachers: the lilies in the field and the birds of the air! Amen."

"Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits p. 157"

"Regret must be an action with a collected mind, so it can be spoken about for upbuilding, so it may of itself give birth to new life, so that it does not become an event whose mournful legacy is a sorrowful mood; repentance in the sense of freedom with the stamp of eternity must have its time, yes, even its time for preparation."

"In this discourse, then, let us consider how by properly looking at the lilies in the field and at the birds in the air the worried person learns: to be contented with being a human being. “Look at the lilies in the field,” look at them-that is pay close attention to them, make them the object-not of a fleeting glimpse in passing but of your consideration."

"Many readers are likely to agree with the observation of the Danish scholar Eduard Geismar on Part One of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “I am of the opinion that nothing of what he has written is to such a degree before the face of God. Anyone who really wants to understand Kierkegaard does well to begin with it.”"

"Let us not make the marvelous too natural; for then perhaps that which we are speaking of is no longer the marvelous, and what we are saying is not what we think we are saying. Two divergences were mentioned, offense and scoffing; for the marvelous, when it is not a man’s salvation either tempts him in defiant cowardice to lose himself and be offended, or in cowardly defiance to assert himself by scoffing. For if he require a sign, and the marvelous is not the sign of human audacity but of divine condescension, then he is offended, as Peter was. And if he seeks after wisdom, then he laughs as Sarah laughed when the promise was announced to her."

"Have you seen the marvel, my hearer, and by what means? Was it with the help of that beautiful power in the soul which consoles and rejoices the childlike element in us, that beautiful power which calls forth the figure our longing craves for, beloved figure of memory, something more than a deceiving presence from bygone days-but also alarms us by the images of horror produced by fear and suspicion? Certainly this power can do a great deal. But what it produces is after all your own creation, even though when produced it becomes effective through the power you gave it. And what this power produces must in one way and another be visible to the earthly eye. But the object of faith, cannot be seen by the earthly eye, and, therefore, cannot show itself in the pictures produced by imagination.. ... . And even if such a figure were to appear, it cannot calm the strife because everything that the imagination creates is unit without context."

"1 Corinthians 2: 6-9"

"We discuss “wisdom” with those that are mature; only it is not the wisdom of the world or of the dethroned Powers who rule this world. It is the mysterious Wisdom of God that we discuss, that hidden wisdom which God decreed from all eternity, for our glory. None of the Powers of this world understands it (if they had, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory). No, as it is written, “What no eye has ever seen, What no ear has ever heard,” What never originated in the mind of man, “God has prepared for those that love him”."

"if the Church were puffed up with the confidence that it could quite comfortably attain what the Apostles, as wholly surrendered men, had had to strive for day and night without seeing any other reward than that of being as it were the dregs of society and reaping the ingratitude of the Church, then he is furious for a moment, reminding them that he, who has been caught up into the third heaven, works out his salvation with fear and trembling. But it was only in love that he acted thus, his only desire being to win men not to himself but to the truth. He inflamed nobody; and in all the vicissitudes of a long life, he found no occasion to arouse unhealthy passions among the faithful."

"Let us, therefore, turn the word upon ourselves, and let everyone individually take to himself what he hears, not asking what message St. Paul’s teaching has for the world, but what is our own personal relationship to this heavenly wisdom. For if it were indeed the most pitiable of all things if what was to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness, to St. Paul a power of God unto salvation — if this had become to anyone but an empty sound on the Apostle’s lips, and a noisy speech in his mouth, to the effect that this heavenly wisdom is to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness! It would be as pitiable, would it not, as if a man knew about that “mystery of godliness” of which St. Paul speaks in another place, saying that “God was manifest in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on throughout the world, but did not know whether he himself had believed it."

"Alas, the debt someone incurs at the gambling table, by throwing dice, in a game of cards, is called a debt of honor; I suppose that because it is meaningless in itself we have to give it an impressive name and then hurry to be rid of it. The debt to God is not a debt of honor like that, but it is, nevertheless, an honor to be in debt to God. It is an honor not to owe fortune anything, but to owe God everything; not to owe fate anything, but to owe providence everything; not to owe caprice anything, but to owe a fatherliness everything.-In this way, he who prays aright struggles in prayer and is victorious in that God is victorious."

"imagine a child sitting and drawing with a pencil, drawing whatever occurs to a child, whatever a child recklessly and disconnectedly dashes off; but behind the child stands an invisible artist who guides his hand so that the drawing that is about to become disordered submits to the law of beauty, so that the line that is about to go astray is called back within the boundary of beauty-imagine the child’s amazement! Or imagine that child puts his drawing aside in the evening, but while he sleeps a friendly hand finishes the jumbled and poorly begun sketch-imagine a child’s wonder when he sees his drawing again in the morning! So also with a person; let us never forget that even the more mature person always retains some of the child’s lack of judgment, especially if the prayer is to assist the explanation, not as the essential but as the means."

"A person can wrong another human being with his prayer, and prayer in this manner is a terrible weapon between man and man, perhaps the most pernicious. The strong man is warned not to misuse his power against the weak, but the weak man is also warned not to misuse the power of prayer against the strong. It may well be that a tyrant who misused his power, a deceiver who misused his shrewdness, never perpetrated as atrocious a wrong as the one who cowardly and slyly prayed in the wrong place, prayed in order to advance his will, flung himself in to the weakness of prayer, into imploring misery, in order to shatter another person."

"If the child sees its mother distressed, it never thinks of tracing the distress back to God as the cause, or that there might be an ambiguity of distress and accordingly that the distress might come from God for the very purpose of drawing the person to God. The child, however, immediately thinks of evil people."

"No human being can give an eternal resolution to another or take it from him; If someone objects to that then one might just as well be silent if there is no probability of winning others, he thereby has merely shown that although his life very likely thrived and prospered in probability and everyone of his undertakings in the service of probability went forward, he has never really ventured and consequently has never had or given himself the opportunity to consider that probability is an illusion, but to venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning, to venture is the fountainhead of inspiration, whereas probability is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the sensate person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby he cheats God, himself, and his generation: cheats God of the honor, himself of liberating annihilation, and his generation of the equality of conditions.""

"What is the issue of the struggle? That God is goodness? Not at all. That God is love? Not at all. No, it is a matter of making oneself clear to God, of truly explaining to him what is beneficial for the one who is praying, of truly impressing it upon his mind, of truly gaining his consent to the wish. And the struggle is well intentioned toward God, because it is about truly being able to be happy in God, truly being able to give him thanks, truly being able to witness to his honor, truly being able to be assured that all fatherliness lives in heaven, about being truly being able to love him-as people do indeed say when they designate the ultimate, to love as much as one loves God. And the struggler is open toward God, because he dares to testify to himself that he is not a child, does not fragment his soul so that he wishes for one thing this minute and something else the next, so that when the fulfillment arrives he has thoughtlessly forgotten the wish-no, there is only the one. He dares to testify to himself that he is straining all his understanding to become sufficiently foresighted to spy the remotest hint of the fulfillment, that he is straining every thought to conjure forth from the most insignificant event anything it could be hiding, that he welcomes with thanksgiving any hint and invites it to stay. If he catches himself becoming lukewarm and falling away from God, he is not slow to repent and is quick to struggle again in prayer."

"Without fail, the good has its reward, but if the “reward-hungry” sensate person wanted to do the good for that reason, would he ever put it into practice? No, the soul must make a resolution in renunciation of all calculating, all sagacity and probability; it must will the good because it is good, and then it will certainly perceive that it has its reward; it must continue in duty because it is duty, the then it will thereby really feel the security; it must will to be reconciled with its opponent out of the unreckoning impulse of the heart, and then the good fight of reconciliation will also win for him the affection of the vanquished."

"If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking."

"The struggle goes on for an explanation, and prayer is the means by which the explanation will correspond to the way he prays about it. One person struggles with all his might against the explanation that would make himself guilty-no, it was all dispensation providence, all from God in order to test, to purify, to try the lover. Another struggles in order that the explanation may explain his guilt to him, so that the passage of freedom will not seem an illusion, but that the chasmic separation of guilt may make the blessedness of reconciliation all the more inward. One person asks that the explanation will unite him to the race and that the explanation will lie in the fate common to all, which is meaningful for the whole, another that the explanation will consider him outside the relation of others in order to select him for solitary pain, but also for solitary election."

"If one person makes comprehensible to another something that is to his advantage in the temporal sense and the latter acts accordingly, then the former may be said to have brought it about. If, however, a person tries to make comprehensible to another his eternal well-being, this does not help straightaway in the same manner, inasmuch as the second still has not grasped the eternal on the basis of what the first said. If, however, he makes the eternal resolution and in it grasps the eternal, then he owes no one anything, not the speaker either."

"Faith reads the understanding only as a dark saying; humanly speaking, it does not have the explanation, only in a certain deranged sense, so that, humanly speaking, it is the most foolish business arrangement ever made in the world. But this is the way it is supposed to be, and God in heaven is still unembarrassed; he is not selling out, whatever human beings do. And he is indeed unchanging, as the understanding says in order to mock the troubled one who cries out to God; but see, its mockery recoils on itself, because God truly is unchanged. He has not become a friend of cowardliness and softness; he has not become so debilitated over the years that he cannot distinguish between mine and thine and everything runs together before him; he is himself still the first inventor of language and the only one who holds the blessing in his hands; he is unchanged, even though he would not be able to satisfy the demands of the times! So it is with faith-humanly speaking, it is the most foolish and, humanly speaking, the most difficult business arrangement."

"Then the Comforter comes with the explanation; then he makes everything new, strips the sufferer of his mourning apparel and gives him a new heart and an assured spirit. It may, however, take time."

"A random word collects a crowd; the easily bought victory makes them enthusiastic, but the more profound explanation puts them off, and if the price is what it must be in relation to the highest, then mockery gives the signal for retreat and gives the retreat the appearance of a glorious victory. Does not mockery always gain the highest at a bargain price! And yet how despicable to want to think that the price of the highest and most sacred, just like the price of temporal things, should be determined by an accident, by the scarcity or the abundance of the commodity in the country. On the other hand, how upbuilding it is to consider that this is not the case and that someone who fancies that he has bought the highest at a low price is simply mistaken, since the price is always the same. How sure and cheerful and resolute the soul becomes in the thought that no price is too high when that which one is buying is the highest."

"If the resolution is not the beginning and the beginning the resolution, then the final account can never be rendered, because in a certain sense there is none. If there is no resolution there will be no tower, however imaginary or however really splendid the estimate was! The good resolution is to will to do everything in one’s power, so serve it to the utmost of one’s capability."

"God does not give a spirit of cowardliness but a spirit of power and of love and of self-control, such as is necessary in order to know what is the good, what is truly great and noble, what significance it has for him and in relation to him; in order to love the good with the unselfish love that desires only to be an unworthy servant, which is always love’s delight, and the opposite of it is a violation that pollutes love for him by making it profitable; and in order to maintain constancy, lest everything become unfruitful without the self-control that tempers the effort and the decision of resolution. This acknowledgment, this assent of resolution, is the first dedication. Alas, how rarely a person experiences this in such a way that even merely in the moment of dedication he renounces all dreams and fancies, every mirage that wants to inflate him and cause him to be amazed at himself, and instead receives the power to envision it as it is, the power to embrace it with self-denying love, the power to make the pact of self-control with it! How rarely a person experiences this in such a way that even merely in the hour of dedication he has the power to hold to the good, which seemingly wants to destroy him, the love not to shrink from it, the self-control not to falsify himself."

"Every human being should not just learn by rote but learn very particularly, that he is nothing-which some learn by recognizing that what they are capable of is as good as nothing, others by recognizing that what they are not capable of is as good as nothing but is sufficient to make all their capability essentially nothing. The extensive enterprise can often be dazzling enough, especially when it is not only glorious and lauded by men but beneficial for many, and yet it is only a mirage; the resolution is not the good resolution until the person gives himself and everything up to the good, all his weaknesses, and leaves it up to God. The mirage is due to a person’s becoming a worthy servant in his own eyes, an important instrument, but this is not the good resolution. The good resolution is satisfied with being the unworthy servant. Therefore every person is to test himself."