Danish author Quotes

“I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.”

“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”

“With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.”

“Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!”

“Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.”

“The wisdom of the years is confusing. Only the wisdom of eternity is edifying.”

“The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.”

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.”

“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.”

“There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of - do you want to know? - you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn't that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: 'No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.”

“...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.”

“What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is.”

“He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it-he is and remains a bungler”

“You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.”

“... all comparisons injure.”

“The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.”

“Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”

“Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.”

“In order to help another effectively, I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him... instruction begins when you put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it.”

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

“This age will die not as a result of some evil, but from a lack of passion.”

“It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.”

“The resolving of the ethical, is freedom; the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.”

“During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.”

“Do it or don't do it - you will regret both.”