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1 " Thus to get the princess, to livewith her joyfully and happily day in and day out (for it is also conceivable thatthe knight of resignation might get the princess, but that his soul had discerned theimpossibility of their future happiness), thus to live joyfully and happily everyinstant by virtue of the absurd, every instant to see the sword hanging over thehead of the beloved, and yet to find repose in the pain of resignation, but joy byvirtue of the absurd—this is marvellous. "
― Søren Kierkegaard ,
2 " Now we will let the knight of faith appear in the rôle just described. He makesexactly the same movements as the other knight, infinitely renounces claim to thelove which is the content of his life, he is reconciled in pain; but then occurs theprodigy, he makes still another movement more wonderful than all, for he says, “Ibelieve nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtueof the fact that with God all things are possible. "
3 " That in which all human life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion. "
4 " If the generations of man passed through the world like aship passing through the sea and the wind over the desert—a fruitless and avain thing; if eternal oblivion were ever greedily watching for its prey andthere existed no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches—how emptywere life then, and how dismal! "
5 " Whenever nowadays we hear the words ‘That’s to be judged by the outcome’ we know immediately with whom we have the honour of conversing. Those who speak thus are a populous tribe which, to give them a common name, I shall call the ‘lecturers’. They live in their thoughts, secure in life, they have a permanent position and sure prospects in a well-organized State; they are separated by centuries, even millennia, from the convulsions of existence; they have no fear that such things could happen again; what would the police and the newspapers say? Their lifework is to judge the great, to judge them according to the outcome. Such conduct in respect of greatness betrays a strange mixture of arrogance and pitifulness, arrogance because they feel called to pass judgement, pitifulness because they feel their lives unrelated in even the remotest manner to those of the great. "