I picked up Kierkegaard in a second-hand shop for $1, and I am utterly amazed. I have never read him before and I am practically speechless by the beauty of this book.
It is Either/Or.
By Soren Kierkegaard:
“What portends? What will the future bring? I do not know, I have no presentiment. When a spider hurls itself down from some fixed point, consistently with its nature, it always sees before it only an empty space wherein it can find no foothold however much it sprawls. And so it is with me: always before an empty space; what drives me forward is a consistency which lies behind me. This life is topsy-turvy and terrible, not to be endured.”
“My view of life is utterly meaningless. I suppose an evil spirit has set a pair of spectacles upon my nose, of which one lens is a tremendously powerful magnifying glass, the other an equally powerful reducing glass.”
And this:
“Tested Advice for Authors: Set down your reflections carelessly, and let them be printed; in correcting the proof sheets a number of good ideas will gradually suggest themselves. Therefore, take courage, all you who have not yet dared to publish anything, even misprints are not to be despised, and an author who becomes witty by the aid of misprints, must be regarded as having become witty in a perfectly lawful manner.”
-Soren Kierkegaard, 1843
