Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety.
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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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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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The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
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It is impossible to exist without passion.
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If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.
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Future is everything that past has forgotten.
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The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
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Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection.
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My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.
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Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
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It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods... Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake... He does it for the sake of God because God demands proof of his faith... He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
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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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All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.
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Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.
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Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
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The question of immortality is of its nature not a scholarly question. It is a question welling up from the interior which the subject must put to itself as it becomes conscious of itself.
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It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
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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.
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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.
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If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.
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Imagine hidden in a simpler exterior a secret receptacle wherein the most precious treasure is deposited - there is a spring which has to be pressed, but the spring is hidden, and the pressure must have a certain strength, so that an accidental pressure would not be sufficient. So likewise is the hope of eternity hidden in man's inmost parts, and affliction is the pressure. When it presses the hidden spring, and strongly enough, then the contents appear in all their glory.
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Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.