
Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch (der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben.
The Education of Mankind, § 93
Lenz (1835).
Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch (der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben.
The Education of Mankind, § 93
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Context: Don't misunderstand me," I said. "Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.
“One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.”
Sie muss also zu weit gehen, um herauszufinden, wie weit sie gehen darf.
"Die Freiheit der Kunst", speech delivered at Wuppertal on September 24, 1966; cited from Cultura 21 magazine http://www.cultura21.de/magazin/denkanstosse/d20050930a.html, September 30, 2005. Translation: Walter Laqueur Germany Today: A Personal Report (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985) p. 130.
On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.
Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XIV: Neptune; Section 3, “Slow Conquest” (p. 211)