Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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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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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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The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
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May new sufferings torment your soul.
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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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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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Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
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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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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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God does not think; he creates. He does not exist; he is eternal.
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Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able.
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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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I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole.
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If you think you understand, it isn't God.
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Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.
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I believe that there is a longing in my soul that searches the whole world.
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If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.
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Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.
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Out of love, God becomes man. He says: 'See, here is what it is to be a human being'.
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The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.