may 5th

Today is May 5th, which is Cinco de Mayo; but it is also the 196th birthday of Søren Kierkegaard. In honour of his birthday, here are some quotes from his writtings:

• Be that self which one truly is.
• Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
• God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
• How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
• Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
• Once you label me you negate me.
• Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
• There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
• It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
• I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius. [I just discovered this quote... which is great, since I have never remembered a dream]
• It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.