Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.. Soren Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Hope is a passion for the possible.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

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.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about.

Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.

What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?

la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás; aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante

Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of something by making them think it is nothing.

For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service of thought

No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved.

Don't forget to love yourself.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

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.

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.

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is 'to a certain degree'.

Hope is passion for what is possible.

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret suffrings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. People corwd around the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul.

What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.

The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is... To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself.

Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.

to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.

Sitting calmly on a ship in fair weather is not a metaphor for having faith; but when the ship has sprung a leak, then enthusiastically to keep the ship afloat by pumping and not to seek the harbor-that is the metaphor for having faith. (Concluding Unscientific Postscript)

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.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear. By the decision to choose hope one decides infinitely more than it seems, because it is an eternal decision

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world - no matter how imperfect - becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

The profundity of Christianity is that Christ is both our redeemer and our judge, not that one is our redeemer and another is our judge, for then we certainly come under judgement, but that the redeemer and the judge are the same.

Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.

Only by investing and speaking your
vision with passion can the truth, one
way or the other, finally penetrate the
reluctance of the world.

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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