Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 14

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I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.

Soren Kierkegaard

Believe, Fighting, Doubt

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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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No grand inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest; nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as anxiety does, which never lets him escape.

Soren Kierkegaard

Men, Judging, Anxiety

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My sorrow is my castle.

Soren Kierkegaard

Sorrow, Castles

Soren Kierkegaard (1946). “Either/or”

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During the first period of our lives the greatest danger is not to take the risk. When once the risk has been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking at first one turns aside and serves trivialities; in the second case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic and perhaps to presumption.

Soren Kierkegaard

Taken, Risk, Too Much

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One is not unpopular because he uses peculiar expressions; that just so happens; such terms become a fad, and by and by everybody, down to the last simpleton, uses them. But a person who follows through an idea in his mind is, and always will be, essentially unpopular. That is why Socrates was unpopular, though he did not use any special terms, for to grasp and hold his 'ignorance' requires greater vital effort than understanding the whole of Hegel's philosophy.

Soren Kierkegaard

Philosophy, Ignorance, Expression

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...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

Soren Kierkegaard

Hands, Personality, Might

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What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.

Soren Kierkegaard

Passion, Reflection, Age

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That which is truly human no generation learns from the one before it. No generation learns from another how to love. No generation has a shorter task assigned to it except insofar as the previous generation shirked its task and deluded itself.

Soren Kierkegaard

Tasks, Generations, How To Love

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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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The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.

Soren Kierkegaard

Dream, Witty, Morning

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I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.

Soren Kierkegaard

Long, Doe, Lovers

Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?

Soren Kierkegaard

Art, What If, Guessing

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Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

Soren Kierkegaard

Long, Mind, Different

"Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, 1844.

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Childhood, Kind, Scene

"On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, 1841.

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You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow, one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool. But you are a long way from marriage.

Soren Kierkegaard

Girl, Children, Pride

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What I really need is to get clear out about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge precedes every act.

Soren Kierkegaard

Needs, Clear, Knows

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Just as in the great moment of resignation one does not mediate but chooses, now the task is to gain proficiency in repeating the impassioned choice and, existing, to express it in existence.

Soren Kierkegaard

Choices, Doe, Tasks

"Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, February 28, 1846.

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Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.

Soren Kierkegaard

Time, Despair, Separation

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There can be no faith without risk.

Soren Kierkegaard

Risk

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The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Soren Kierkegaard

Friendship, Karma, Way

SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1965). “THE LAST YEARS”

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I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heaven, Soul, Bliss

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I do not care for anything. I do not care to ride, for the exercise is too violent. I do not care to walk, walking is too strenuous. I do not care to lie down, for I should either have to remain lying, and I do not care to do that, or I should have to get up again, and I do not care to do that either. Summa summarum: I do not care at all.

Soren Kierkegaard

Lying, Exercise, Should Have

Soren Kierkegaard (1946). “Either/or”

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In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin.

Soren Kierkegaard

Past, Long, Individual

"Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions" by Soren Kierkegaard, 1844.

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Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Powerful, Passion

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Soren Kierkegaard

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

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