Oto > Oto's Quotes

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could have easily have been found already written in a book: but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed ; thus it will stay firmly and forever lodged in your mind.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“This life is a test-it is only a test.
If it had been an actual life, you would have received further
instructions on where to go and what to do.
Remember, this life is only a test.”
― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“When we are in good health, we all feel very real, solid, and permanent; and this is of all our illusions the most ridiculous, and also the most obviously useful from the point of view of the efficiency and preservation of the race.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of her forms with one another”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

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

“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'.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“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.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“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 about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“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 slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

“For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.”
― Soren Kierkeggard

“The only intelligent tactical response to life’s horror is to laugh defiantly at it”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin