Quotes About Commitment

The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable – whether given or chosen – and to be able to continue finding this one lovable, no matter how that person changes. To love is to love the person one sees.

What we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world.

For it is great to give up one's wish, but it is greater to hold it fast after having given it up, it is great to grasp the eternal, but it is greater to hold fast to the temporal after having given it up.

The person who lives in the ethical sphere lives intentionally, intensively. Such a person possesses character and conviction, and is thus willing to sacrifice himself for something greater than oneself.

Now the story of Abraham has the remarkable property that it is always glorious, however poorly one may understand it; yet here again the proverb applies, that all depends upon whether one is willing to labor and be heavy laden. But they will not labor, and yet they would understand the story.

On principle' one can do anything and what one does is, fundamentally, a matter of indifference, just as a man's life remains insignificant even though 'on principle' he gives his support to all the 'needs of the times.

A Reflexão é o anjo exterminador da espontaneidade… Se fosse verdade que a reflexão devesse controlar a inclinação amorosa, nunca haveria casamento.

In every generation that man is a rarity who exercises such a power over himself that he can will what is not pleasant to him, that he can hold fast that truth which does not please him, hold that it is the truth although it does not please him, hold that it is the truth precisely because it does not please him, and then nevertheless, in spite of the fact that it does not please him, can commit himself to it. pp 151-2

Better well hanged than ill wed.

El compromiso es, desde luego, el más ridículo de todos los estados y situaciones ridículas. El matrimonio, por lo menos, tiene un sentido, aunque traiga aparejadas muchas molestias. Pero el compromiso es un invento que se debe únicamente al hombre y no honra, desde luego, a su inventor.

existing cannot be done without passion.

To be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself…the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.

joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all, even their lives... proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating...absorbed in themselves and in working towards their higher goal.

What Christendom needs at every moment is someone who expresses Christianity uncalculatingly or with absolute recklessness.

love is all; it gives all and it takes all.

order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it.

What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die

I sacrifice myself for my profession, my wife, my children, or, more properly expressed, I do not sacrifice myself for them, but I find in them my satisfaction and joy.

A Panegyric upon Abraham

Why then did Abraham do it ? For God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God's sake because God required this proof of his faith ; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof.

What was it that Nog was always quoting, one of Vic Fontaine's colloquialisms . . . in for the penny, in for the pound? Ro

Like its elder sibling love, friendship was a set of obligations willingly assumed, truth and trust among them, not just a pleasure or a feeling. At least it was if you were to be a friend worth having.

He stared past her to the place at the other end of the dining table where Regina would sit as his wife. If she were here. If he hadn't driven her away. "I'm not sure I know how to love, Louisa." She took his hand. "Don't be silly. Loving is easy. It's finding someone to love you back that's hard.