Famous Soren Kierkegaard Quotations

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"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
by Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
"A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again;' that is as much as to say. 'May new sufferings torment your soul.'"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Alas! While the speculative honourable professor explains the entire existence has he in distraction forgotten his own name, that he is a man, purely and simply a man, not a fantastic 3
8 of a paragraph."
by Søren Kierkegaard
"And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Fixed ideas are like a cramp in the foot - the best remedy against it is to tread on it."
by Søren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"If you marry you will regret it. If you do not marry you will regret it. If you marry or do not marry, you will regret it."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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 wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Of all tyrannies democracy is the most agonizing, the most inane, the absolute fall of everything great and elevated."
by Søren Kierkegaard
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid"
by Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
"People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us -- but not suckle us."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"The most painful state of living is remembering the future."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves."
by Søren Kierkegaard
"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself"
by Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
"To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Once you label me you negate me."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause - that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take the stance - backward."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"The Media is an abstraction (because a newspaper is not concrete and only in an abstract sense can be considered an individual), which in association with the passionlessness and reflection of the times creates that abstract phantom, the public, which is the actual leveler. . . . More and more individuals will, because of their indolent bloodlessness, aspire to become nothing, in order to become the public, this abstract whole, which forms in this ridiculous manner: the public comes into existence because all its participants become third parties. This lazy mass, which understands nothing and does nothing, this public gallery seeks some distraction, and soon gives itself over to the idea that everything which someone does, or achieves, has been done to provide the public something to gossip about. . . . The public has a dog for its amusement. That dog is the Media. If there is someone better than the public, someone who distinguishes himself, the public sets the dog on him and all the amusement begins. This biting dog tears up his coat-tails, and takes all sort of vulgar liberties with his leg--until the public bores of it all and calls the dog off. That is how the public levels."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again;' that is as much as to say, 'May new sufferings torment your soul.'"
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Purity of heart is to will one thing."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"During the first period of a man's life, the danger is not to take the risk."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by ou..."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"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 liv..."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether inca..."
by Soren Kierkegaard
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."
by Soren Kierkegaard


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