It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God's Word ('Give all your goods to the poor.' 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left.' 'If anyone takes your coat, let him have your cloak also. Rejoice always.' 'Count it sheer joy when you meet various temptations' etc.). The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God's requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.

Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair. The emphasis is on before God, or with a conception of God; it is the conception of God that makes sin dialectically, ethically, and religiously what lawyers call 'aggravated' despair.

It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.