Quote collection
496 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In actuality, no one ever sank so deep that he could not sink deeper, and there may be one or many who sank deeper. So it is always possible to be happy and grateful that things are not worse!"
"So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die-yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die."
"For the sadness in legitimate humour consists in the fact that honestly and without deceit it reflects in a purely human way upon what it is to be a child."
"The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones."
"No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual."
"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."
"The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'."
"Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute."
"...it is presumptuous ridicule of God if someone thinks that only the person who desires great wealth chooses mammon. Alas, the person who insists on having a penny without God, wants to have a penny all for himself. He thereby chooses mammon. A penny is enough, the choice is made, he has chosen mammon; that it is little makes not the slightest difference. The love of God is hatred of the world and love of the world hatred of God."
"Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning."
"My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity."
"To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all."
"Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it."
"To venture causes anxiety. Not to venture is to lose oneself."
"The meaning lies in the appropriation."
"There are men who are wanting in the comparative, they as a rule are the most interesting."
"If the ethical - that is, social morality- is the highest ... then no categories are needed other than the Greek philosophical categories."
"Backwards understood be only can but, forwards lived be must life."
"The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I."
"I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole."