ماذا لو أن كل شيء في هذا العالم هو عبارة عن سوء فهم؟ ماذا لو أن الضحك في الحقيقة هو بكاء؟ - Søren Kierkegaard

He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Zealousness to learn from life is seldom found, but all the more frequently a desire, inclination, and reciprocal haste to be deceived by life. Undaunted, people do not seem to have a Socratic fear of being deceived, for the voice of God is always a whisper, while the demand of the age is a thousand-tongued rumor, not an all-powerful call that creates great men but a stirring in the offal that creates confused pates, an abracadabra that produces after its kind as is the case with all production. Even less do people seem to have above all a Socratic fear of being deceived by themselves, do not seem to be the least aware that if the self-deceived are the most miserable of all, then among these, again, the most miserable are those who are presumptuously deceived by themselves in contrast to those who are piously deceived.