Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus Quotes

“one cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments

“The individual lives unperturbed, sufficient unto himself, but then the paradox of self-love is awakened through the love of another, the one desired. (Self-love lies at the foundation of, or goes to the foundation of, all love, which is why, if we would like to think of a religion of love, it would be just as epigrammatic as true that it would have to assume a condition and accept it as given: that a person loves himself in order to be able to demand that he love the neighbour as himself.) The lover is changed by this paradox of love, so that he hardly recognizes himself (this is witnessed to by poets, who are love’s spokesmen, as well as by lovers themselves, in that they allow poets to take only the floor from them, not their passion) So this imperceptibly sensed paradox of the understanding affects a person and his self-knowledge, so he who believed he knew himself is no longer certain whether he is a stranger creature than Typhon, or whether there is not in his being a milder and more divine part”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus