Soren Kierkegaard Quotes & Sayings

The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And then, remarkably enough, even though he lives amongst a 'Christian people,' he incurs the same peril as he did when it was dangerous to openly confess Christ. And because of the follower's life, it will become evident who the admirers are, for the admirers will become agitated with him. Even these words will disturb many - but then they must likewise belong to the admirers. — Soren Kierkegaard

I would have perished had I not perished. — Soren Kierkegaard

The sorcerer Virgil had himself chopped in pieces and placed in a cauldron to be cooked for eight days, thus to become rejuvenated.10 He had someone watch out that no intruder peeped into the cauldron. The watchman was unable, however, to resist the temptation. It was too soon. Virgil disappeared with a cry, like a little child. I, too, have probably looked too early into the cauldron, into the cauldron of life and its historical development, and no doubt will never manage to be more than a child. [ ... ] — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts. — Soren Kierkegaard

About as genuine as tea made from a bit of paper which once lay in a drawer beside another piece of paper which had been used to wrap up a few tea leaves from which tea had already been made three times. — Soren Kierkegaard

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not. — Soren Kierkegaard

Love has many mysteries, and this first infatuation is also a mystery, even if a minor one - most people who rush into it get engaged or indulge in other foolish pranks, and then it's all over with the twinkling of an eye and they don't know what they have conquered or what they have lost. — Soren Kierkegaard

I stick my finger into existence.. it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean? — Soren Kierkegaard

On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart — Soren Kierkegaard

Backwards understood be only can but, forwards lived be must life. — Soren Kierkegaard

So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me. — Soren Kierkegaard

The commandment is that you shall love, but when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for; without this life you really do not live. — Soren Kierkegaard

People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation. — Soren Kierkegaard

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. — Soren Kierkegaard

Boredom is the only continuity the ironist has. — Soren Kierkegaard

No one comes back from the dead, no one has entered the world without crying; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, nor when he wishes to leave. — Soren Kierkegaard

Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair. — Soren Kierkegaard

It is comic that a mentally disordered man picks up any piece of granite and carries it around because he thinks it is money, and in the same way it is comic that Don Juan has 1,003 mistresses, for the number simply indicates that they have no value. Therefore, one should stay within one's means in the use of the word "love". — Soren Kierkegaard

Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes; and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish. — Soren Kierkegaard

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager - I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? — Soren Kierkegaard

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown. — Soren Kierkegaard

Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward. — Soren Kierkegaard

What is youth? A dream. What is love? The dream's content. — Soren Kierkegaard

When I get up in the morning, I go right back to bed again. I feel best in the evening the moment I put out the light and pull the feather-bed over my head. I sit up once more, look around the room with indescribable satisfaction, and then good night, down under the feather-bed. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone. — Soren Kierkegaard

The philistine tranquillises himself with the trivial. — Soren Kierkegaard

she does not suspect how much reason I have for deprecating all sympathy. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have. — Soren Kierkegaard

In fact one is tempted to ask whether there is a single man left ready, for once, to commit an outrageous folly. — Soren Kierkegaard

I have attacked no one as not being a Christian, I have condemned no one. — Soren Kierkegaard

The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes
and your enemy looks just like your neighbor. — Soren Kierkegaard

A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them, their sound beomes like the sound of beautiful music ... And men flock about the poet saying, Sing for us soon again; that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before. — Soren Kierkegaard

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. — Soren Kierkegaard

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. — Soren Kierkegaard

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. — Soren Kierkegaard

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy - to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily. — Soren Kierkegaard

What we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world. — Soren Kierkegaard

The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control. — Soren Kierkegaard

And this is the simple truth
that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. — Soren Kierkegaard

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair. — Soren Kierkegaard

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity. — Soren Kierkegaard

Hope is a passion for the possible. — Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God. — Soren Kierkegaard

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted. — Soren Kierkegaard

[The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ... — Soren Kierkegaard

The wisdom of the years is confusing. Only the wisdom of eternity is edifying. — Soren Kierkegaard

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'. — Soren Kierkegaard

Without risk, faith is an impossibility. — Soren Kierkegaard

Do you know of any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's condescension and extravagance towards us human beings than that He places Himself, so to say, on the same level of choice with the world, just so that we may be able to choose; that God, if language dare speak thus, woos humankind - that He, the eternally strong one, woos sapless humanity? Yet, how insignificant is the young lover's choice between her pursuers by comparison with this choice between God and the world. — Soren Kierkegaard

one cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek. — Soren Kierkegaard

Of what good is an armchair of velvet when the rest of the environment does not match? It is like a man going around naked and wearing a three-cornered hat. — Soren Kierkegaard

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read. Ultimately, you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books. — Soren Kierkegaard

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency. — Soren Kierkegaard

The meaning lies in the appropriation. — Soren Kierkegaard

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. — Soren Kierkegaard

The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I. — Soren Kierkegaard

This age will die not as a result of some evil, but from a lack of passion. — Soren Kierkegaard

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. — Soren Kierkegaard

Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party. — Soren Kierkegaard

Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world's foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world's foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it ... Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don't hang yourself, you'll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy. — Soren Kierkegaard

As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him. — Soren Kierkegaard

I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it ... but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. — Soren Kierkegaard

It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat - as is the case with the better artists. — Soren Kierkegaard

The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity. — Soren Kierkegaard

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey. — Soren Kierkegaard

The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing. — Soren Kierkegaard

An increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction, and above all it is certain that for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, simply because they are so dialectical and the result of one clever discovery may give the whole question a new turn, because at any moment reflection is capable of explaining everything quite differently and allowing one some way of escape; because at the last moment of a reflective decision reflection is capable of changing everything
after one has made far greater exertions than are necessary to get a man of character into the midst of things. — Soren Kierkegaard

And 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, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor at night. — Soren Kierkegaard

My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of something by making them think it is nothing. — Soren Kierkegaard

A curiously interested observer sees a great deal, a scientifically interested observer is worthy of all honor, and anxiously interested observer sees what others do not see, but a crazy observer sees perhaps the most, his observation is more intense and more persistent, just as the senses of certain animals are sharper than those of man. — Soren Kierkegaard

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God — Soren Kierkegaard

Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in - otherwise there is something terribly wrong. — Soren Kierkegaard

To have distinctiveness is to believe in the distinctiveness of everyone else, because distinctiveness is not mine but is God's gift by which he gives being to me, and he indeed gives to all, gives being to all. (p. 271) — Soren Kierkegaard

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

The most common despair is ... not choosing, or willing, to be oneself ... [but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself. — Soren Kierkegaard

I think I have the courage to doubt everything; I think I have the courage to fight everything. But I do not have the courage to know anything, nor to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life isn't like a romantic novel where opportunities are always so favorable. What I complain of is that life is not like a novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, bloodless, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to wich I myself give life and being. — Soren Kierkegaard

Only by investing and speaking your
vision with passion can the truth, one
way or the other, finally penetrate the
reluctance of the world. — Soren Kierkegaard

If a man had a little button sewn on the inner pocket of his coat 'on principle' his otherwise unimportant and quite serviceable action would become charged with importance
it is not improbable that it would result in the formation of a society. — Soren Kierkegaard

However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning. — Soren Kierkegaard

By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.
Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing oneself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Here there is no dragging of the feet, no difficulty with his self and its infinitizing, he is ground smooth as a pebble, as exchangeable as a coin of the realm. Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be. Naturally, the world has generally no understanding of what is truly horrifying. — Soren Kierkegaard

The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility — Soren Kierkegaard

Silence is the snare of the demon, and the more one keeps silent, the more terrifying the demon becomes. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence. — Soren Kierkegaard