
"If one refuses, even, to sit down at the chessboard and make a move, one cannot, of course, be checkmated."- F.C. Copleston
Truth. Being engaged is a risk. Whether it’s pursuing a relationship, a work project, a social cause, the safest thing is to stay home and not get involved. Unfortunately, that also means a lonely life and a waste of the blessing of choice which is the foundation of what it means to be human.
"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose."- Lessing
We are blessed with the gift of life and the opportunity to choose what we believe, what we stand for- our deepest values. There will be things with which we resonate and which touch our hearts. And then there are those that are beyond comprehension.
We live with the consequences of the choices made by others. Some may be startling and some may be hurtful. What Lessing suggests, is that some may be so profoundly Incomprehensible, that they are beyond our understanding.
And our incredulity validates our humanity.
"The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time."- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Life is a mystery on so many levels. Certainly there are consequences to our decisions. Yet, the righteous suffer, the wicked thrive, and Wittgenstein acknowledges the obvious- there is no way to truly understand the mysteries of the universe.
"Behavior is a mirror in which everyone shows his own image."- Goethe
Words, words, words. Clearly, as quote collector, I am a lover of words. However- it is true. “Talk is cheap.” If you want to know who a person is, don’t listen to their words, rather, observe their actions.
The Talmud captures this idea in BT Eruvin 65b, that we can know someone in 3 ways- (it’s better in Hebrew- koso, keeso, kaaso)- their cup- what they drink and what behavior emerges when they do so; their pocket- i.e.- follow the money and that will disclose their priorities; their anger- what is it that causes them to lose their temper and how to do they handle it?
In other words- “behavior is a mirror.”
"The measure of a man's fundamental disposition is this: how far is what he understands from what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his action."- Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Kierkegaard says essentially the same thing as Lessing in quote #44. It’s all about putting our thoughts, our feelings, into what we do with the time with which we are blessed.
The next 3 quotes are from the same book. I must have really enjoyed it!
"No one should be so preoccupied with the differences so that he cowardly or presumptuously forgets that he is a human being; no man is an exception to being a human being by virtue of his particularising differences. He is rather a human being and then a particular human being."- ibid.. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Kierkegaard is a religious thinker. Here he expresses the Biblical teaching that we are all made in the image of God. In fact, rabbinic commentaries suggest that the reason Genesis begins with the creation of one human is to remind and teach us that we are all descended from one ancestor and all members of the family of humanity.
Whatever our uniqueness, we are all, at our core, fundamentally human beings in the image of God.
"The most trivial expression or the slightest action builds up if said or done with love or in love."- ibid., Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Quote # 43 emphasized the idea that what we do is more important than what we think or feel. Kierkegaard’s nuanced addition is that when we add the element of love to our actions, that love is perceptible and adds immeasurably to the impact of our behavior. His words are a strong suggestion that we connect with a sense of love before we do even the smallest thing, and that love will enhance the impact of our action.
"Human superiority over the animals is not only what one most often mentions, the universally human, but it is also what one most often forgets, that within the race every individual is essentially different or unique. This superiority is the really human superiority."- ibid., Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
See quote #46, above. Kierkegaard is clearly navigating the uniqueness of what it means to be human. While he emphasized the commonality of all humans, here he wants to make sure that the possibility of individuality is uniquely human.
This is undoubtedly appealing, yet I’m not sure it is true. I imagine that anyone who has had an animal companion would disagree, and be happy to share the uniqueness of each member of whatever the species might be.
"The love of God is the only happy love, but on the other hand it is also something terrible. Face to face with God man is without standards and without comparisons; he cannot compare himself with God, there he is nothing, and in the presence of God he may not compare himself with others, for that is a distraction. And so in everyone we find a clever fear of really having anything to do with God, because by having anything to do with God they become nothing. And even though, humanly speaking, a man honestly tries to do the will of God: before God it is all one, his atom of progress vanishes to nothing before God's holiness. And so we find in everyone a clever fear of really having to do with God: they desire the relationship at a distance and so spend their life in the distractions of time:- all that making a business of life is really only a distraction."- Soren Kierkegaard, Papirer VIII A 63, N58
This is truly a heavy thought. God’s presence is so overwhelming and human capability so extraordinarily inadequate, that we prefer to ignore connection with God in order to forestall our own sense of despair at our eternal lack of capability.
That everything with which we fill our lives is a trivial distraction from our own fundamental inadequacy.
Kind of depressing. Why strive for goodness, for holiness, even, if it’s profoundly a hopeless exercise?
"So when it is related in Genesis that God said to Adam, "Only of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat," it is a matter of course that Adam did not really understand this word. For how could he have understood the differences between good and evil, seeing that this distinction was in fact consequent upon the enjoyment of the fruit?"- Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread
I love Kierkegaard’s defense of Adam. One might say the same thing of Cain’s murder of Abel. How was he to know what would happen?
I guess paradise, the Garden of Eden, is a place of ignorant bliss.
About this series-
I love words. I love when a word exactly captures the moment, the feeling. How it precisely describes something that you experienced but didn’t know exactly how to express. It’s like a warm bath or a deeply satisfying meal.
And beyond that- a collection of words. A deeply insightful phrase, thought-provoking and uplifting. A quote to remember.
I started collecting quotes when I was 16 years old. (1972) I’m 68 now, as I write these words, (2024), and there are 472 quotes in my collection. At this precise moment.
That’s not really that many over the course of 52 years. I guess I am fairly discriminating. Sometimes years can go by and the collection lays dormant. In other years there is a great harvest of quotes.
These are not necessarily famous quotes, things you’ll often hear referenced. For the most part, they simply represent words that I read that made me stop for a moment to meditate and bask in their impact. And quotes I enjoy reading and re-reading and quoting myself!
These quotes represent the evolution of my thinking over the course of 52 years. I look forward to pondering what it is that made me find each one meaningful enough to save.
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