Selections from Kierkegaard

I can resign everything by my own strength and find peace and rest in the pain; I can put up with everything – even that dreadful demon, more horrifying that the skeletal one who terrifies men, even if madness held its fool’s costume before my eyes and I understood from its face that it was I who should put it on – I can still save my soul as long as my concern that my love of God conquer within my is greater than my concern that I achieve earthly happiness. In his very last moment, a person can still concentrate his whole soul in one single look to heaven, from whence come all good gifts, and this look will be understood by himself and by him whom it seeks to mean that he has been true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume. He whose soul lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether he gets a kingdom or a wretched piece of silver for it.