In order to swim one takes off all oneās clothes; in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all oneās inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc. before one is sufficiently naked. - SĆøren Kierkegaard
Related Quotes
I think, therefore I am wrong, after which I speak, and my wrongness falls on someone also thinking wrongly, and then there are two of us thinking wrongly, and, being human, we canāt bear to think without taking action, which, having been taken, makes things worse.
Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully. If itās denied an adequate instrument (and weāre all denied that, at birth, some more than others), out comesā¦poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it - but take whatever comes with great trust, and only if comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body - King Lear.
We must not force our poets to limit the world any further. That is a crime against life itself. If the poet begins to speak only of narrow things, of things that we can effortlessly digest
and recognise, of things that do not disturb, frighten, stir, or annoy us, or make us restless for more, make us cry for greater justice, make us want to set sail and explore inklings murdered in our youths, if the poet sings only of our restricted angles and in restricted terms and in restricted language, then what hope is there for any of us in this world?
Those of us who want this are cowards, in flesh and in spirit. We fear heroic heights. We dread the recombining of the world, dread a greater harvest of being. We sit lazily and demand that our poets draw the horizon closer. We therefore become separated from our true selves. Then even beauty can seem repugnant. Then, we no longer recognise who we are, and we forget what we used to be, what states we sometimes inhabited, what extended moments of awareness.