It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from...

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it —...

If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly...

To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.

Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the...

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

Honour him, dear Symparanekromenoi, for his grey hair and his misfortune.

The stone that was rolled before Christ’s tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher’s stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we...

Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy’s favor, offering to sell her charms to it.

Battle day and night against the guile of oblivion…

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Hope is a passion for the possible.

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is...

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a...

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure...

What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.

…my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it’s human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through...

For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness… they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls...

Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by...

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to...

The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible...

It is now my intention to draw out from the story of Abraham the dialecticalconsequences inherent in it, expressing them in the form ofproblemata, in order to seewhat a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox...

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be...

Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder....

At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people...

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they seldom use

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are...

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is… To need...

Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything.

Whether you are man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or free, happy or unhappy; whether you bore in your elevation the splendour of the crown or in humble obscurity only the toil and heat...

There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it,...

Riches and abundance come hypocritically clad in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be security against anxieties, and they become then the object of anxiety. They secure a man against anxieties just about as well as the...