Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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I stick my finger into existence and it smells of nothing.
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Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?
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A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.
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The great trick with a woman is to get rid of her while she think's she's rid of you.
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The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament.
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The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
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Christians remind me of schoolboys who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through.
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No time of life is so beautiful as the early days of love, when with every meeting, every glance, one fetches something new home to rejoice over.
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The individual, no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it, does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.
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Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing.
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What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?
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Pain reconciles one to existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt in the old fable. The thread is spun with tears, bleached by tears, the shirt sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself.
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Whoever has the world's treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of the spirit it is otherwise.
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Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, who so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility.
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Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.
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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.
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As I stood alone and forsaken, and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my own nothingness, and on the other hand, the sure flight of the birds recalled the words spoken by Christ: Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father: then, all at once, I felt how great and how small I was; then did those two mighty forces, pride and humility, happily unite in friendship.
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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!
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Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing.
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It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
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Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
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But doubt is wily and cunning and never, as it is sometimes said to be, loud or defiant. It is unassuming and sly, not bold or assertive - and the more unassuming, the more dangerous.
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Teach me, God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
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There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow.