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It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

Kierkegaard

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"Blessed is the person who has struggled. He has found life."

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Pleasure can be supported by illusion, but happiness rests upon truth.

Chamfort

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Always remember that the task is toward being able to hold fast to the thought of God more and more for a longer time, not the way a dreamer does, idling and flirting, but by clinging to it within your work. God is pure act. A mere dreamy loitering over the thought of him is not true prayer.

Kierkegaard

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...We look at the struggle, the ideological struggle between communism on the one hand and democracy on the other, and we see the struggle between America and Russia. Now certainly, we can never give our allegiance to the Russian way of life, to the communistic way of life, because communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. When we look at the methods of communism, a philosophy where somehow the end justifies the means, we cannot accept that because we believe as Christians that the end is pre-existent in the means. But in spite of all of the weaknesses and evils inherent in communism, we must at the same time see the weaknesses and evils within democracy.

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

And this is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, "Love your enemy." And it’s significant that he does not say, "Like your enemy." Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me. I don’t like what they say about me and other people. I don’t like their attitudes. I don’t like some of the things they’re doing. I don’t like them. But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Nietzsche

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We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Charles Kingsley

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Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent van Gogh

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It is not our effort that brings atonement. No, joy over being reconciled, over the fact that atonement has already been made, produces an honest striving.

It is not good works that make a good person but the good person who does good works. And one becomes good by faith alone. Consequently, faith first of all. It is by faith that one does truly good works.

Kierkegaard

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It is because they do not compete with others

That they are beyond the reproach of the world.

Lao Tzu

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Blest is the person who has suffered—he has found the Life.

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There is no freedom without unbelievable, unprecedented, unstoppable courage.

Dr. Cornel West

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By this we can see that love has overcome the world – that it repays evil with good.

Kierkegaard

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The century advances; but every individual begins anew.

Goethe