Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession QUOTES

1 " The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

2 " 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. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

3 " For as the Good is only a single thing, so all ways lead to the Good, even the false ones: when the repentant one follows the same way back. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

4 " In eternity it will be asked whether you may not have damaged a good thing, in order that you also might judge with them that did not know how to judge, but who possessed the crowd's strength, which in the temporal sense is significant, but to which eternity is wholly indifferent. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

5 " Oh Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man's burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

6 " What shall it profit the sick man to imagine himself, as all men do, to be well, if the physician says he is sick! "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

7 " Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always present, is always true. Only the Eternal applies to each human being, whatever his age may be. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

8 " For whether it be the lightly armed desire of youth which it is presumed will press forward to victory, or whether it be the mature man s determination that will fight its way through life, they both count on having a long time at their disposal. They presuppose, in the plans for their efforts, a generation or at least a number of years, and therefore they waste a great deal of time and on that account the whole thing so readily ends in delusion. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

9 " Of a man who only wills the Good out of fear of punishment, it is necessary to say with special emphasis, that he fears what a man should not and ought not to fear: loss of money, loss of reputation, misjudgment by others, neglect, the world’s judgment, the ridicule of fools, the laughter of the frivolous, the cowardly whining of consideration, the inflated triviality of the moment, the fluttering mist-forms of vapor. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

10 " So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere is its friendship that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

11 " But just for that reason, precipitate repentance is false and is never to be sought after. For it may not be the inner anxiety of heart but only the momentary feeling that presents the guilt so actively. This kind of repentance is selfish, a matter of the senses, sensually powerful for the moment, excited in expression, impatient in the most diverse exaggerations — and, just on this account, is not real repentance. Sudden repentance would drink down all the bitterness of sorrow in a single draught and then hurry on. It wants to get away from guilt. It wants to banish all recollection of it, fortifying itself by imagining that it does this in order not to be held back in the pursuit of the Good. It is its wish that guilt, after a time, might be wholly forgotten. And once again, this is impatience. Perhaps a later sudden repentance may make it apparent that the former sudden repentance lacked true inwardness. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

12 " The indolent old man hopes that his death is still a long way off. But repentance and remorse belong to the eternal in a man. And in this way each time that repentance comprehends guilt it understands that the eleventh hour has come: that hour which human indolence knows well enough exists and will come, when it is talked about in generalities, but not when it actually applies to the indolent one himself. For even the old man thinks that there is some time left and the indolent youth deceives himself when he thinks that difference in age is the determining factor in regard to the nearness of the eleventh hour. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

13 " There is, however, a power that is called memory. It should be dear to all the good ones as well as to all lovers. Yes, it may even be so dear to lovers that they almost prefer this whisper of memory to the sight of each other, as when they say, “Do you remember that time, and do you remember that time? "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

14 " For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul. 24 "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

15 " When a peculiar thinker, who just by his peculiarity is more tied up with the Eternal and less with time’s moment, addresses his speech to men, he is rarely understood or listened to. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

16 " Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always present, is always true. Only the Eternal applies to each human being, "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

17 " A man can wish to slink away from many things in life, and he may even succeed, so that life’s favored one can say in the last moment, “I slipped away from all the cares under which other men suffered.” But if such a person wishes to bluster out of, to defy, or to slink away from remorse, alas, which is indeed the most terrible to say of him, that he failed, or — that he succeeded? "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

18 " The call to find the way again by seeking out God in the confession of sins is always at the eleventh hour. Whether you are young or old, whether you have sinned much or little, whether you have offended much or neglected much, the guilt makes this call come at the eleventh hour. The inner agitation of the heart understands what remorse insists upon, that the eleventh hour has come. For in the sense of time, the old man’s age is the eleventh hour; and the instant of death, the final moment in the eleventh hour. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

19 " let us speak of the wish and thereby of the sufferings; let us properly linger over this, convinced that one may learn more profoundly and more reliably what the highest is by considering suffering than by observing achievements, where so much that is distracting is present. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession

20 " For there is indeed danger. There is a danger that is called delusion. It is unable to check itself. It goes on and on: then it is called perdition. But there is a concerned guide, a knowing one, who attracts the attention of the wanderer, who calls out to him that he should take care. That guide is remorse. He is not so quick of foot as the indulgent imagination, which is the servant of desire. He is not so strongly built as the victorious intention. He comes on slowly afterwards. He grieves. But he is a sincere and faithful friend. If that guide’s voice is never heard, then it is just because one is wandering along the way of perdition. "

― Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession