Soren Kierkegaard Quotes (86 Quotes)


    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.

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


    Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

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


    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.

    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.

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

    What kind of power is it that dares intrude between me and my bride, the bride I myself have chosen and who has chosen me And this power would command her to be true to me does she then need to be so commanded And is she to be true to me only because a third party commands it, one whom she therefore loves more than me


    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.

    The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.

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

    At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people to fight clever, vigorous, crafty fellows. Later I realized that it was good that I did not become one, for most police cases involve misery and wretchedness -- not crimes and scandals.

    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.

    Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.


    Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

    Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this Or are you not terrified by it I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.

    When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, ''It is talking to me, and about me.''

    There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

    Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

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

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

    The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality.

    Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion... while truth again reverts to a new minority.

    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.

    It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.

    People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.


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

    Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

    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.

    It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.

    Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us -- but not suckle us.

    It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.


    Related Authors


    Karl Marx - George Santayana - Aristotle - Xenophanes - Protagoras - Philo - John Dewey - Epicurus - Democritus - Avicenna


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