"I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication. For change, stimulus. That petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space. 'Then', I cried, half desperate, 'grant me at least a new servitude'."- ibid., Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
I wish I could recall the context of this quote. The protagonist is clearly captured in such a profound rut that it feels like slavery. Is it the boredom of daily life? Is she bound by someone else’s choices? Whatever it is, it is so overwhelming that any change seems preferable.
Be careful of what you ask for, we might remind her- you might get it.
"I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or ordered only at a price I cannot afford to give."- ibid., Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
I need to re-read Jane Eyre. This quote is parallel to #70 above. The character is clearly struggling to achieve a level of self-acceptance and reminding herself that that in and of itself is enough.
"Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth- so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane- quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."- ibid., Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Bronte makes a good argument for why it is important to reflect on and determine one’s moral perspective in moments of equanimity. If forced to determine the good at the height of emotional passion, it may be impossible to make an ethical choice and certainly difficult to hang on to that decision.
Her writing so beautifully captures that overwhelming passion that causes “body and soul to rise in mutiny.”
"And the miraculous thing is that, although each of us stands in the mire himself, we can each pull out our neighbor, or at least keep him from drowning. None of us has solid ground under his feet; each of us in only held up by the neighborly hands grasping him by the scruff, with the result that we are each held up by the next man, and often, indeed most of the time, hold each other up mutually."- Franz Rosenzweig
Another favorite quote. Community it the foundation of Jewish life. Rosenzweig writes of how much we need each other, how intertwined our lives are, even if we are not always fully conscious of our connectedness. Yet, he reminds, most of the time we are holding each other up.
"Only the first gentle push of the will- and will is almost too strong a word- that first quite gentle push we give ourselves when in the confusion of the world we once quietly say, "we Jews", and by that expression commit ourselves for the first time to the eternal pledge that, according to an old saying, makes every Jew responsible for every other Jew. Nothing more is assumed than the simple resolve to say once: "Nothing Jewish is alien to me"- and this is in itself hardly a resolve, scarcely anything more than a small impulse to look around oneself and into oneself. What each will see no one can venture to predict."- ibid., Franz Rosenzweig
Rosenzweig speaks from his own experience. He was raised without a Jewish identity and was on the verge of converting to Christianity, when he himself experienced that “first gentle push of the will.”
He dips his toe into Judaism and discovers the connectedness of the community he described in quote #74.
“Nothing Jewish is alien to me” does not imply that everything Jewish is in my heart and soul. It implies and open-ness to exploration, as he writes, “to look around.”
"We must keep in mind the obvious fact that a Law, that the Law as a whole, is the prerequisite for being chosen, the law whereby divine election is turned into human electing, and the passive state of a people being chosen and set apart is changed into the activity on the people's side of doing the deed which sets it apart."- ibid., Franz Rosenzweig
The Midrash, Jewish folkloric commentary, suggests that the Israelites did not choose to receive the Torah of their own free will. In fact, according to the Midrash, it was offered to and rejected by many other peoples. Not only that, but the Israelites only said yes when Mt. Sinai was raised over their heads and they were threatened with destruction.
Since then, Rosenzweig writes, it is up to each individual in each generation to continue to accept Jewish teaching and to put it into practice.
77. "When all around thee is solemn silence, . . . and when there is silence within thee, then thou dost apprehend, and apprehend with the emphasis of inwardness, the truth of the saying, "Thou shalt love the Lord they God and him only shalt thou serve," and thou dost apprehend that it is thou alone in the whole world, thou who art alone in the environment of solemn silence, so alone that every doubt, and every objection, and every excuse, and every evasion, and every objection, in short, every voice, is reduced to silence in thine own inward man, every voice, that is to say, every other voice but God's , which about thee and within thee talks to thee by means of the silence. If there never were such silence about thee and within thee, thou never didst learn or dost learn obedience."- Soren Kierkegaard
Silence is so powerful. The first word of the most important Jewish prayer is- Shma. Listen. Ibn Gabirol- in seeking wisdom the first step is silence, the second is listening.
Recalling that Reb Nachman taught that we each have only a certain number of words to say and when we have completed them, our life ends. Now there’s a powerful incentive for silence!
Kierkegaard invites us to be silent in order to experience the power of God’s presence. He suggests that the quiet within us will conquer any challenges to our faith. I’m not sure about that.
And obedience? I am also unclear as to whether what I think I hear if I hear God’s voice is truth. I guess I’m more skeptical and not quiet enough.
Yet, for all that, I am pro-quiet.
78. "To offer God thanks for an imagined preferential love is to deceive Him, and to give Him to understand that if the heavier burden had been laid upon your shoulders, you might not have been able to believe His love; for when this is admitted it becomes a very different matter to thank God that one has escaped being tried in the more difficult struggle."- Soren Kierkegaard, Edifying Discourses
It is interesting to read this as a Jew. I am not sure if Kierkegaard is specifically referencing the notion of “the chosen people.” As a rabbi ordained by the Reconstructionist movement, following the teachings of Mordecai Kaplan, I can’t help but read Kierkegaard through the lens of Kaplan’s rejection of this concept.
Yet, as I read his words, I also think of the oft quoted pablum- “God doesn’t give us more to handle than we can.” Personally I think it is just fine to be grateful that our lives are not more challenging than they are.
For most of us, yes. It could be a lot worse.
"It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are."- Soren Kierkegaard, Journals
Well- this is assuredly true. There is so much in the world that we can never understand. Rather than making ourselves crazy, Kierkegaard comforts us with the notion that it’s okay. That there are things in life that are inexplicable and we can make our peace with that reality.
"What you knew with love will be consoling to remember."- Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Another comforting thought from Kierkegaard. “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” There can be much pain in love that is lost. At a recent funeral, the widow shared that they had been married for 58 years, and it was not enough. I pray that she does find consolation in remembering what she knew with love.
About this series-
I love words. I love when a word exactly captures the moment, the feeling. How it precisely describes something that you experienced but didn’t know exactly how to express. It’s like a warm bath or a deeply satisfying meal.
And beyond that- a collection of words. A deeply insightful phrase, thought-provoking and uplifting. A quote to remember.
I started collecting quotes when I was 16 years old. (1972) I’m 68 now, as I write these words, (2025), and there are 472 quotes in my collection. At this precise moment.
That’s not really that many over the course of 52 years. I guess I am fairly discriminating. Sometimes years can go by and the collection lays dormant. In other years there is a great harvest of quotes.
These are not necessarily famous quotes, things you’ll often hear referenced. For the most part, they simply represent words that I read that made me stop for a moment to meditate and bask in their impact. And quotes I enjoy reading and re-reading and quoting myself!
These quotes represent the evolution of my thinking over the course of 52 years. I look forward to pondering what it is that made me find each one meaningful enough to save.
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