la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás; aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante

To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking Him.

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.

You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs...

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can...

Once you label me, you negate me

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes...

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and...

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

Satan’s despair is absolute because Satan, as pure spirit, is pure consciousness, and for Satan (and all men in his predicament) every increase in consciousness is an increase in despair.

Yet in another and still more definite sense despair is the sickness unto death. It is indeed very far from being true that, literally understood, one dies of this sickness, or that this sickness ends...

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of...

If anyone thinks he has faith and yet is indifferent towards this possession, is neither cold nor hot, he can be certain that he does not have faith. If anyone thinks he is Christian and...

Prayer is listening.

Then faith’s paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through...

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity

That is the road we all have to take – over the Bridge of Sighs into eternity.

The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship...

I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

To have distinctiveness is to believe in the distinctiveness of everyone else, because distinctiveness is not mine but is God’s gift by which he gives being to me, and he indeed gives to all, gives...

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your...

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!

People unable to bear the martyrdom […] unintelligently jump off the path, and choose instead, conveniently enough, the world’s admiration of their proficiency. The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and...

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes...

Now, it is of course well known that Christ continually uses the expression ‘imitators.’ He never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression ‘follower’ he always explains...

As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given...

He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a...

The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling...

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of...

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm,...

Only by investing and speaking yourvision with passion can the truth, oneway or the other, finally penetrate thereluctance of the world.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than “The Individual

Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forward.