Monday Quote Frenzy – Søren Kierkegaard

However much one generation may learn from another, there is one thing it will never be able to learn from its predecessor, and that is the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Its task is the same as that of every previous generation, and it gets no further, unless its predecessor happens to have shirked its duty and deceived itself . . . . No generation has ever learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning, and the task of one generation is never any shorter than that of its predecessors, and if anyone, unlike the preceding generation, should be unwilling to stay with love but wants to go further – then it is nothing but idle and foolish talk. But lots of people find it hard to set aside their belief in universal progress, even in the field of love. “We must keep moving!” they say. “We must go further!” And if their mania for moving forward is typical of the present age, it is also a very old story.