We are known in a depth of darkness through which we ourselves do not even dare to look. And at the same time, we are seen in a height of a fullness which surpasses our highest vision.
If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song.
There is faith in every serious doubt, namely, the faith in the truth as such, even if the only truth we can express is our lack of truth.
Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.
Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love.
Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.
Existential anxiety of doubt drives the person toward the creation of certitude of systems of meaning, which are supported by tradition and authority. Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended with the utmost certainty.
In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character.
He who knows about depth knows about God.
Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature.
The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.
The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. “Existential” in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one’s existence.
I have given no definition of love. This is impossible, because there is no higher principle by which it could be defined. It is life itself in its actual unity. The forms and structures in which love embodies itself are the forms and structures in which love overcomes its self-destructive forces.
Individualism is the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self without regard to its participation in its world. As such it is the opposite of collectivism, the self affirmation of the self as part of a larger whole without regard to its character as an individual self.
Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
I loved thee beautiful and kind, And plighted an eternal vow; So altered are thy face and mind, t’were perjury to love thee now!
But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.
Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.
Knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.
In the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.
The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .