“Alas, time comes and time goes, it subtracts little by little; then it deprives a person of a good, the loss of which he indeed feels, and his pain is great. Alas, and he does not discover that long ago it has already taken away from him the most important thing of all-the capacity to make a resolution-and it has made him so familiar with this condition that there is no consternation over it, the last thing that could help gain new power for renewed resolution!”

—  Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), p. 48

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Sören Kierkegaard 309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

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