Soren Kierkegaard

Are you now living in such a way that you are aware of being a single individual and thereby aware of your eternal responsibility before God?

Are you living in such a way that this awareness can acquire the time and stillness and liberty to withdraw from life?

Have you made up your mind about how you want to perform your work, or are you continually of two minds because you want to be in agreement with the crowd?

Do you stick to your bid, not defiantly, not despondently, but eternally concerned; do you, unchanged, continue to bid on the same thing and want to buy only the same thing while the terms are variously being changed?

Are you hiding nothing suspicious in your soul, so that you would still wish things were different, so that you would dare robber-like to seize the reward for yourself, would dare to parade it, would dare to point to it?

Are you doing good only out of the fear of punishment, so that you scowl even when you will the good, so that in your dreams at night you wish the punishment away and to that extent also the good, and in your daydreams delude yourself into thinking that one can serve the good with a slavish mind?

Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847, p. 127-140

 

Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing

http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2523

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