"Reflections... must not so much move, mollify, reassure, persuade as awaken and provoke persons and sharpen thought. The time of reflections is indeed prior to action, and their purpose therefore is to rightly set all the elements into motion. Reflections ought to be a gadfly; therefore their tone ought to be quite different from that of edifying discourse, which rests in mood, but reflections ought in the good sense to be impatient, high-spirited in mood. Irony is necessary here and the even more significant ingredient of the comic. One may well laugh once in a while, if only to make the thought clearer and more striking.... Therefore, the reflections must.. fetch [persons] up out of the cellar, call to them, turn their comfortable way of thinking topsy-turvy with the dialectic of truth." Soren Kierkegaard