Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 14

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• 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.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Fighting, Pride, Men

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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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• 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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• Choose to be who you are. . . The individual who would become a person must at some point take over his entire being - must, that is, choose herself.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Be Who You Are, Individual, Persons

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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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• My sorrow is my castle.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Sorrow, Castles

  Soren Kierkegaard (1946). “Either/or”

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Reflection, Age

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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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• 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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• 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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• There can be no faith without risk.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Risk

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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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• 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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• The absurd . . . the fact that with God all things are possible. The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Understanding, Facts, Unexpected

  Fear and Trembling "Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration" (1843)

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• A man's personality is matured only when he appropriates the truth, whether it is spoken by Balaam's ass or a sniggering wag or an apostle or an angel.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Angel, Men, Personality

  "Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829-1848". Book by Søren Kierkegaard and Gregor Malantschuk, p. 226, Journals IV A 87 (1843), 1978.

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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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• 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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