If you care about ideas, where to stow them?

An idea is like an animal – alive, hungry, susceptible to disease, in need of attention. You cannot box an idea in the attic. An idea put away is an idea put to death.

Our world is vivid with ideas. Since the Reformation, they’ve been proliferating in libraries and conversation. Before 1500 they were pretty much forbidden – murmurs of the Devil in the house of the Divine. Organized religion cannot tolerate dissent, for that corrodes its authority. A civil government rules by firepower; a faith system by truth power. A preacher’s pistol is the word of God.

Martin Luther changed that for the world we call Western. There wasn’t one word of God, but at least two, maybe more. Today there are as many religions as ice-cream flavors. I’ve got my very own.

One challenge with home-grown belief systems is maintenance. I can’t repeat, “Credo and that’s that – case closed” or look up my answers in a holy book. I must remember, review and refine my ideas, revising them with new input, defending them against opponents. Thinking for oneself takes work. The weaker one’s memory, the tougher the task of recalling what one thinks. I keep forgetting, for example, whether I’m a materialist, idealist, or existentialist – or none of the above. This self-identification may matter to no one else, but it matters to me. Who am I anyway! Where do I fit!

To stay sane (and coherent), I devised a notional storage system. It’s like learning a foreign language: where to put the verbs, adjectives, etc. Weak memory compounds the difficulty. Mine’s a colander. I can scarcely remember what I thought yesterday. If I contradict myself and refute my assertions, oh well, can’t be helped.

Recently, almost by chance, I adopted Kierkegaard into my clamorous kennel of forebears. Does his inclusion jazz me? You bet – and jostles other ideas to make room. But this new pony in my stable is hardly low maintenance. First, I must get what he’s telling me, which is no walk in the park. Next, I must retrieve what I’ve extracted lest his ideas drift “in one ear and out the other.” A sermon’s only a sermon if you’re paying attention.

Since writing became my work “full-time” (curious expression), I’ve constructed a concept container that suits me, though I’d never recommend it. Call it “erudition lite.” I herd a master’s thoughts into a kind of holding pen, disgracefully shrinking them (taming them, really) into aphorisms, epigrams, soundbites. I say “disgracefully” because such reduction does scant justice to its original, but ideas abound, time is short, my brain is porous, and my patience a gnat’s, so what the hell, isn’t some thought preferable to none?

I buff my soundbites till they gleam, then arrange them to cohabit amiably, without snarling or kicking one another. Then I label and file this tidy packet as if it were my own. These condensations are to thought what Readers Digest condensed books were to literature (remember them?) – cheap, low-brow, unjust to authors, but better than nothing – and easily referenced if one forgot.

Stabling ideas takes a while but not forever. I only perform the Procrustean surgery on writers I revere: the likes of Montaigne, Pascal, Thoreau, Emerson, Dr. Johnson, Jane Austen, Santayana. Some writers resist condensation – Dickens, say, whose wonder is his amplitude, or Henry James, the least aphoristic genius ever. I keep Shakespeare’s whole book handy, which I’ve lugged everywhere for fifty years.

Recently, I performed this surgery on Kierkegaard. I attach the result – not for you to read, unless you care to, but to give you a feel for this sly trick I’ve described.

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Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

What labels me, negates me.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.’

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

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.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.

Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.

It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.

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 the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.

The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

My sorrow is my castle.

It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.

Once you are born in this world, you’re old enough to die.

When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.

Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.

If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.

With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair.

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.

Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy... This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.

This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.

Only the person who is essentially capable of remaining silent is capable of speaking essentially.

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight to avoid this?

If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly begin with the quadrille--people would presumably laugh a little at him, but in the world of spirit this is very plausible. What, then, is education? I believe it is the course the individual goes through in order to catch up with himself, and the person who will not go through this course is not much helped by being born in the most enlightened age.

Faith is the highest passion in a man.

And this is the simple truth--that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

To be human, is not a fact, but a task.

Man has made a discovery ... the way to make life easy is to make it meaningless.

On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is the measure of what spirit there is. [...] In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals.

Great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything, everything, everything exactly as it is – and yet why was this torment one you never gave voice to? Was it perhaps that you kept it to yourself, like the beloved whose name one still cannot bear the world to mention? For a poet buys this power of words to utter all the grim secrets of others at the cost of a little secret he himself cannot utter.

Courage is life's only measure.

Our age reminds one of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: Everything goes on as usual and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond which gives it validity, no longer exists, and so the whole age is at once comic and tragic--tragic because it is perishing, comic because it goes on.

Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with great taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to answer gravely: "It is granted thee.”

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

The crowd is composed of individuals, but it must also be in the power of each one to be what he is: an individual; and no one at all, no one whatsoever is prevented from being an individual unless he prevents himself – by becoming one of the masses.

The public is a monstrous nothing.

Complete publicity makes it impossible to govern.

It requires courage for a man to choose himself.

Just as a man, sent into the town with a letter, has nothing to do with its contents, but has only to deliver it; just as a minister who is sent to a foreign court is not responsible for the content of the message, but has only has to convey it correctly; so too, an Apostle has really only to be faithful to his service and to carry out his task. Therein lies the essence of an Apostle’s life of self-sacrifice, even if he were never persecuted, in the fact that he is “poor, yet making many rich,” that he never dares take the time or the quiet of carefreeness in order to grow rich. Intellectually speaking he is like a tireless housewife who herself hardly has time to eat so busy is she preparing food for others.

It is modest of the nightingale not to require any one to listen to it, but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether anyone listens or not.

The humorous self-sufficiency of genius is the unity of a modest resignation in the world and a proud elevation above the world: of being an unnecessary superfluity and a precious ornament.

The absence of inwardness is also madness.

Without risk there is no faith.

The most tremendous thing which has been granted to man is: the choice, freedom.

A thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

Faith is an infinite self-made care as to whether one has faith – and that self-made care is faith.

Romantic love can very well be represented in the moment, but conjugal love cannot, because an ideal husband is not one who is such once in his life but one who is every day such.

It is better to try something and fail than try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won’t be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.