Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
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Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.
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The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone.
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One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).
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Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice. . . but the voice of eternity within a person it cannot drown.
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It doesn't occur to me at this moment to say more; another time, perhaps tomorrow, I may have more to say, but always the same thing and about the same, for only gypsies, robber gangs and swindlers follow the adage that where a person has once been he is never to go again.
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Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do.
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The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.
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Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join the dance.
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Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?
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My sorrow is my castle.
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The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.
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It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.
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Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
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The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.
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Ulysses was not comely, but he was eloquent, Yet he fired two goddesses of the sea with love.
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The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
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How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that God exists unless one has already allowed Himself to ignore Him? A king's existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king's existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God's existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker's pious bungling.
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There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
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Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it.
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No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.
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...a human being not only can choose but... he must choose... for in this way God retains His honor while at the same time has a fatherly concern for humankind. Though God has lowered Himself to being that which can be chosen, yet each person must on his part choose. God is not mocked. Therefore the matter stands thus: If a person avoids choosing, this is the same as the presumption of choosing the world.
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To have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.
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... all comparisons injure.
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...it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it.