Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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...my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin.
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Doubt is thought's despair; despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought.
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Irony is the birth-pangs of the objective mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by the I , between existence and the idea of existence). Humor is the birth -pangs of the absolute mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by the I , between the I and the idea of the I.
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Take it and return it: the kiss of love.
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The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
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Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false.
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It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it?
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Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
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Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility.
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This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.
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The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.
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The most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...but the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.
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I would have perished had I not perished.
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A curiously interested observer sees a great deal, a scientifically interested observer is worthy of all honor, and anxiously interested observer sees what others do not see, but a crazy observer sees perhaps the most, his observation is more intense and more persistent, just as the senses of certain animals are sharper than those of man.
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It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
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Sleeping is the height of genius.
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There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.
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The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
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When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, "It is talking to me, and about me".
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With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.
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If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.
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Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time.
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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.
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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.