Quotable: By the Stars

by Soren Kierkegaard in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, "The Expectancy of Faith" (1843):

"How, then, should we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful; they have the same location now that they had for our ancestors and will have for generations to come. By what means does he conquer the changeable? By the eternal. By the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the ground of the future, and therefore through it the future can be fathomed.

. . . The believer, therefore, is finished with the future before he begins with the present, because what has been conquered can no longer disturb, and this victory can only make someone stronger for the present work."