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Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

μετὰ φόβου καὶ τρόμου τὴν ἑαυτῶν σωτηρίαν κατεργάζεσθε

φοβερὸν τὸ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς χεῖρας θεοῦζῶντος

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would create such a complex and fancy worm food?

What every man looks for in his life is his own salvation. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is.

If a human being were a beast or an angel, he could not be in anxiety.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.

He who cheats once will cheat again, particularly when it comes to self-knowledge. But self-knowledge, in the form of an examination of conscience, is demanded by Christan ethics. They were very pious people who maintained that self-knowledge paves the way to knowledge of God.