Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 13

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Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.

Soren Kierkegaard

Distance, Taken, Thinking

"Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 1". Book by Søren Kierkegaard, Indiana University Press, Journals VII 1A 363, p. 40, 1967.

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Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.

Soren Kierkegaard

Grief, Knowledge, Men

Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away - yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.

Soren Kierkegaard

Party, Long, Soul

Soren Kierkegaard's journal entry, March 1836.

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Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die - but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.

Soren Kierkegaard

Drinking, Order, Lust

"Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 83, 1845.

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Busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impossible for an individual to form a heart.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Heart, Hustle

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With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.

Soren Kierkegaard

Men, Order, Perfect

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Birthday, Ideas, Age

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How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.

Soren Kierkegaard

Mean, Men, Dumb

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Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heart, Focus, Purity

Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

Life, Wisdom, Philosopher

Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru, 1938).

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It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

Soren Kierkegaard

Understanding, Trouble, Paradox

"Journals". Book by Søren Kierkegaard, Harper (1847), 1959.

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The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.

Soren Kierkegaard

Clever, Rip, Passion

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With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.

Soren Kierkegaard

Taken, Portraits, Daguerreotypes

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In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

Soren Kierkegaard

Melancholy

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Honor, World

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Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

Soren Kierkegaard

Observers, Earnestness

The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, (Pap VI B 120:13), 1845.

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Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death.

Soren Kierkegaard

Profound, Together, Different

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Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

Soren Kierkegaard

Men, Personality, Made

Soren Kierkegaard (2015). “The Prayers of Kierkegaard”, p.134, University of Chicago Press

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Marriage, Wind, Weather

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Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that
love too has its prophecies in the individual.

Soren Kierkegaard

Believe, Long Ago, Remembrance

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Love, Depression, Depressing

"Either/Or" by Soren Kierkegaard, ‎Howard Vincent Hong, ‎Edna Hatlestad Hong, Princeton University Press, Vol. 1, 1987.

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Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Fall, Sin, Dread

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Education, Teacher, May

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To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Nature, Heart

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It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.

Soren Kierkegaard

Life, Inspiring, Wisdom

Diary (1843)

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Born: May 5, 1813
Died: November 11, 1855
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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