It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand... - Søren Kierkegaard

The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic.

And the man who learns most from the levelling and himself becomes greatest does not become an outstanding man or hero — that would only impede the levelling process, which is rigidly consistent to the end — he himself prevents that from happening because he has understood the meaning of levelling; he becomes a man and nothing else, in the complete equalitarian sense. That is the idea of religion. But, under those conditions, the equalitarian order is severe and the profit is seemingly very small; seemingly, for unless the individual learns in the reality of religion and before God to be content with himself, and learns, instead of dominating others, to dominate himself, content as priest to be his own audience, and as author his own reader, if he will not learn to be satisfied with that as the highest, because it is the expression of the equality of all men before God and of our likeness to others, then he will not escape from reflection.

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.