# Works of Love  ## Metadata - Author: [[Søren Kierkegaard, Howard Vincent Hong (Translator), Edna Hatlestad Hong (Translator)]] - Full Title: Works of Love - Category: #books ## Highlights - The one to whom I have a duty is my neighbor, and when I fulfill my duty I show that I am a neighbor. Christ does not speak about knowing the neighbor but about becoming a neighbor oneself, about showing oneself to be a neighbor just as the Samaritan showed it by his mercy. - To choose a beloved, to find a friend, yes, this is a complicated business, but one's neighbor is easy to recognize, easy to find if only one will personally acknowledge one's duty. - "You shall love." Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured against every change, eternally made free in blessed independence, eternally and happily secured against despair. - Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured. This security of eternity casts out all anxiety and makes love perfect, perfectly secured. - By this shall love is also eternally secured against every change. The love that has only existence can be changed; it can be changed within itself and it can be changed from itself. - But just because it is the same love, for that very reason it is not in the eternal sense the true love, which remains, unchanged the same, whereas that spontaneous love, when it is changed, is still basically the same. - You do not have the right to become insensitive to this feeling, because you shall love; but neither do you have the right to love despairingly, because you shall love; and just as little do you have the right to warp this feeling in you, because you shall love. You shall preserve love, and you shall preserve yourself and by and in preserving yourself preserve love. - Love your friend honestly and devotedly, but let love for the neighbor be what you learn from each other in your friendship's confidential relationship with God! - No change, however, can take the neighbor from you, because it is not the neighbor who holds you fast, but it is your love that holds the neighbor fast. If your love for the neighbor remains unchanged, then the neighbor also remains unchanged by existing. - When it is a duty in loving to love the people we see, there is no limit to love; if the duty is to be fulfilled, love must be limitless, it is unchanged, no matter how the object becomes changed.