*At the hour of death there is only one consolation, that the one has not avoided opposition but has survived it. What a man achieves or does not achieve is not within his power. He is not the one who shall steer the world; he has one and only one thing to do-to obey. Therefore everyone ought first and foremost (instead of asking what position is most comfortable to him, what connections are most advantageous to him) to place himself at a point where Governance can use him, if it so pleases Governance.* For what is it to be busy? One ordinarily think that the manner in which a man is occupied determines whether he should be called busy or not. But there is not so. It is only within a narrower aspect of the definition that the maner is the determining factor-and this only after the object is first defined. He who occupies himself only with the ethernal, unceasingly every moment-if this were possible-is not busy. Consequently he who really occupies himself with the eternal is never busy. To be busy means, divided & scattered(depending upon the object which occupies one), to occupy oneself with all the manyfold things in which it s practically impossible for a man to be whole, whole entirely or whole in which in any single part, something only a lunatic can successfully do.
*Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man & man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term. However beautiful the love relationship has been between two or more people, however complete all their enjoyment and all their bliss in mutual devotional affection have been for them, even if all men have praised this relationship-if God and the relationship to God have been left out, then, Christianity understood, this has not been love but a mutual & enchanting illusion of love.
* Do not appeal to the judgement of men concerning you in order to prove your love, for the judgement of men has validity only as far as it agrees with God's demand; otherwise men are only your accomplishes.
*Even the happiest love between man & man has still one danger which the purely human conception of love cannot imagine, the danger that earthly love could become too intense, so that God-relationship is disturbed, the danger that the God-relationship, when humanly speaking there is perfect peace and no danger in sight, can require even this, the happiest love, as sacrifice.
*Christ love for Peter was so boundless that in loving Peter he accomplished loving the person one sees. He did not say,"Peter must change first and become another man before I can love him again." No, just the opposite, he said,"Peter is Peter, and I love him; love, if anything, will help him to become another man" Therefore he did not break off the friendship in order perhaps to renew it again when Peter had become another man. No. He preserved the friendship in changed and in this way helped Peter to become another man.
*Christianity understood that loving is loving the person one sees. The emphasis is not on loving the perfections one sees in a person, but on loving the person one sees, whether or not one sees perfections or imperfections in this person, yes, however distressingly he has changed, in as much as he certainly has not ceased to be the same man. He who loves the perfections he sees in a person deos not see the person and therefore ceased to love when the perfection cease, when change steps in.
*Christian conception of self-renunciation: give up your selfish desires and longings, give up your arbitrary plans and purposes so that you in truth work disinterestly for the good-and submit to being abominated almost as a criminal, scorned and ridiculed for this very reason,; submit, if it is demanded of you, to being executed as a criminal for this very reason-or, more correctly, do not submit to this, for one can hardly be forced into this, but choose it freely. Christian self renunciation knows in advance that this will happen and chooses it freely.
*If one wants to make sure that love is completely unselfish, he eliminated every possibility of repayment.
*For him who is to praise love(which everyone can do, it is not a talent) self-renunciation's relationship to God or in self-renunciation to be related to God ought to be everything, ought to be earnestness; whether or not there is a production ought to be a jest, that is, the God relationship itself ought to be more important to him than the yield.
*Christianity turns attention completely away from external, turns it inward, makes your every relationship to other human beings into a God-relationship.
*Christian understood one has ultimately & essentially to do with God in everything, although one nevertheless must remain in the world and in the relationship s of earthly life allotted to him. But having in everything to do with God (consequently one is never delayed in the way, half-way, by information, by human judgement, as if this were decisive) is simultaneously the highest consolation and the utmost streneousness, the greatest mildness & rigour.
*It does not then help any that you intend that he shall judge someone else, for you yourself have made Him
