Soren Kierkegaard's Quotes

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

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.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

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

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

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

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

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

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.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

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.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Don't forget to love yourself.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

Once you label me you negate me.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

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

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

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

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

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.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.