Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

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.

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.

The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.

The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

If you think you understand, it isn't God.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

Be that self which one truly is.

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

We live as if we were unaware of our impending destruction

On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.

All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

Future is everything that past has forgotten.

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic - if it is pulled out I shall die.

I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.

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.

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

No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.

Comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make.

The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.

Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.

Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.

Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term.

The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.

What labels me, negates me.

A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.

A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all we've got, be it little or much. Every person can do that.

A genius may perhaps be a century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end, the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so it is no longer paradoxical.

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual."

The Bible is God's love letter to us

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

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

God has given each of us our "marching order." Our purpose here on Earth is to find those orders and carry them out. Those orders acknowledge our special gifts.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

I must find a truth that is true for me.

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

The God that can be named is not God.

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

There is something almost cruel about the Christian's being placed in a world which in every way wants to pressure him to do the opposite of what God bids him to do.

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.

Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.

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