40 quotes
The myths have always condemned those who "looked back." Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
What makes loneliness an anguish
Is not that I have no one to share my burden,
But this:
I have only my own burden to bear.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
What I strive for is impossible: that my life shall acquire a meaning. I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
To be free, to be able to stand up and leave everything behind — without looking back. To say Yes —
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
For all that has been — Thanks! To all that shall be — Yes!
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
The longest journey
Is the journey inwards.
Of him who has chosen his destiny,
Who has started upon his quest
For the source of his being.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
"To forgive oneself"—? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us … Hence too the necessity of preparing for it.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Maturity: among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Your body must become familiar with its death — in all its possible forms and degrees — as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
In the faith which is "God's marriage to the soul", you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the Other.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
To love life and men as God loves them — for the sake of their infinite possibilities,
to wait like Him,
to judge like Him,
without passing judgment,
to obey the order when it is given
and never look back —
Then He can use you — then, perhaps, He will use you.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Give me a pure heart — that I may see Thee.
A humble heart — that I may hear Thee,
A heart of love — that I may serve Thee,
A heart of faith — that I may abide in Thee.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)