Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.
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Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
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We live as if we were unaware of our impending destruction.
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I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.
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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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In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin.
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Do you know of any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's condescension and extravagance towards us human beings than that He places Himself, so to say, on the same level of choice with the world, just so that we may be able to choose; that God, if language dare speak thus, woos humankind - that He, the eternally strong one, woos sapless humanity? Yet, how insignificant is the young lover's choice between her pursuers by comparison with this choice between God and the world.
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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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The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
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This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.
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Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.
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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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The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.
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A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation.
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It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
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What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.
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Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
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No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual.
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Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection.
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Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.
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Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.
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The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
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Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility.
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Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.