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Quotes by Danish Authors
"Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away."
"Mine': what does this word mean? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to, what contains my whole being, which is mine only so far as I belong to it. My God is not the God that belongs to me, but the God to whom I belong; and so, too, when I say my native land, my home, my calling, my longing, my hope. If there had been no immortality before, this thought that I am yours would be a breach of the normal course of nature."
"Without risk faith is an impossibility."
"To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him."
"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."
"Once you are born in this world you're old enough to die."
"Everyone take his revenge on the world. My revenge consists in bearing my distress and anguish enclosed deeply within me while my laughter entertains everyone. If I see someone suffer I give him my sympathy, console him as best I can, and listen to him calmly when he assures me that I am fortunate. If only I can keep this up until the day I die I shall have had my revenge."
"When indeed does the temporal suffering oppress a man most terribly? Is it not when it seems to him that it has no significance, that it neither secures nor gains anything for him? Is it not when the suffering, as the impatient man expresses it, is without meaning or purpose?"
"Sitting calmly on a ship in fair weather is not a metaphor for having faith; but when the ship has sprung a leak, then enthusiastically to keep the ship afloat by pumping and not to seek the harbor--that is the metaphor for having faith."
"Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it."
"If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin."
"Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion."
"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 something by making them think it is nothing."
"The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth."
"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 are obliged to act accordingly."
"It takes a purely human courage to renounce the whole temporal realm in order to gain eternity, but this I do gain and in all eternity can never renounce-it is a self-contradiction. But it takes a paradoxical and humble courage to grasp the whole temporal realm now by virtue of the absurd, and this is the courage of faith."
"Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship."
"People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. That is a complete misunderstanding. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result, people have hitherto been beating the air in their struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion."
"The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones."
"For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service of thought."
"How far removed in time must an event be for us to remember it? How far for memory's longing to be no longer able to seize it? Most people have a limit in this respect: what lies too near them in time they cannot remember, nor what lies too remote. I know no limit. What was experienced yesterday, I push back a thousand years in time, and remember as if it were yesterday."
"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 possible: faith."
"If an Arab in the desert were suddenly to discover a spring in his tent and so would always be able to have water in abundance how fortunate he would consider himself so too when a man who ... is always turned toward the outside thinking that his happiness lies outside him finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him."
"Language has time as its element, all other media have space as their element."
"No, like worldly contempt, worldly honor is a whirlpool, a play of confused forces, an illusory moment in the flux of opinions. It is a sense-deception, as when a swarm of insects at a distance seem to the eye like one body; a sense-deception, as when the noise of the many at a distance seems to the ear like a single voice."
"What our age lacks is not reflection but passion."
"My love consumes me. Only my voice is left, a voice which has fallen in love with you whispers to you everywhere that I love you. Oh! Does it weary you to hear this voice? Everywhere it enfolds you; like an inexhaustible, shifting surround, I place my transparently reflected soul about your pure, deep being."
"Truth is not introduced into the individual from without but was within him all the time."
"Teach me O God not to torture myself not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith."
"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."
"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."
"Now she has power and passion and the struggle has significance for me-let the momentary consequences be what they may. Suppose that in her pride she becomes giddy, suppose that she does break with me-all right! -she has her freedom, but she will still belong to me. That the engagement should bind her is silly-I want to possess her only in her freedom."
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