Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Quotes

“How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful; they have the same location now that they had for our ancestors and will have for generations to come. By what means does he conquer the changeable? By the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the ground of the future, and therefore through it the future can be fathomed. What, then, is the eternal power in a human being? It is faith. What is the expectancy of faith? Victory-or, as Scripture so earnestly and so movingly teaches us, that all things must serve for good those who love God.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

“When the past is allowed to remain what it is, the past, when a person leaves it by stepping onto the good path and does not look back too often, he himself is changed little by little, and the past is imperceptibly changed at the same time, and eventually they do not, so to speak, suit each other. The past fades away into a less definite form, becomes a recollection, and the recollection becomes less and less terrifying. It becomes quieter, it becomes gentle, it becomes sad, and in each of these attributes it is becoming more and more distanced . Finally the past becomes almost alien to him; he does not comprehend how he could possibly have gone astray in that way, and he hears recollection's account of it just as the traveler hears a legend in a distant land.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

“Can a person, then, do any more than love? Have thought and language any higher expression for loving than always to give thanks? Not at all, it has a lower, a humbler expression. Even the person who is always willing to give thanks nevertheless loves according to his own perfection, and a person can truly love God only when he loves him according to his own imperfection. Which love is this? It is the love that is born of repentance, which is more beautiful than any other love, for in it you love God. It is more faithful and more fervent than all other love, for in repentance it is God who loves you.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses