Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Repetition
Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Death and Dying
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
During the first period of a man's life, the danger is not to take the risk. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Risk
What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Passion
When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, ''It is talking to me, and about me.'' ~Soren Kierkegaard - Bible
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Faith
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Paradox
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Thoughts and Thinking
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth --look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Enjoyment
Once you label me you negate me. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Names
Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Philosophers and Philosophy
Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Prayer
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Saints
This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Ideas
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Sleep
In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Depression
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Mystics and Mysticism
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Travel and Tourism
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Ideas
At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people to fight: clever, vigorous, crafty fellows. Later I realized that it was good that I did not become one, for most police cases involve misery and wretchedness -- not crimes and scandals. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Police
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Fear
I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Frustration
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Bores and Boredom
Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Deliberation
How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Talkativeness
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Age and Aging
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Personality
The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Quarrels
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Freedom of Speech
The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Martyrdom
It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Courage
It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion... while truth again reverts to a new minority. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Minorities
Purity of heart is to will one thing. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Purity
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Anxiety
Spiritual superiority only sees the individual. But alas, ordinarily we human beings are sensual and, therefore, as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes -- we see something abstract, the crowd, and we become different. But in the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd, He only sees each individual. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Crowds
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Tyranny
Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic -- if it is pulled out I shall die. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Sorrow
Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Belief
Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Prayer
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Freedom of Speech
The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Indolence
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important ~Soren Kierkegaard - Concentration
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Adversity
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Desire
Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Irony
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Bores and Boredom
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Understanding
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Marriage
Be that self which one truly is. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Self-love
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Self-expression
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Pleasure
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! ~Soren Kierkegaard - Possibilities
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Idleness
The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Memory
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Life and Living
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Prayer
Boredom is the root of all evil--the despairing refusal to be oneself. ~Soren Kierkegaard - Bores and Boredom
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