1
A person who speaks like a book is exceedingly boring to listen to; sometimes, however, it is not inappropriate to talk in that way. For a book has the remarkable property that it can be interpreted any way you wish. If one talks like a book one’s conversation acquires this property too. I kept quite soberly to the usual formulas. She was surprised, as I’d expected; that can’t be denied. To describe to myself how she looked is difficult. She seemed multifaceted; yes just about like the still to be published but announced commentary to my book, a commentary capable of any interpretation. One word and she would have laughed at me; another and she would have been moved; still another and she would have shunned me; but no such word came to my lips. I remained solemnly unemotional and kept to the ritual.― ‘She had known me for such a short time’, dear God, it’s only on the strait path of engagement one meets such difficulties, not the primrose path of love.”―from_ Either/ Or: A Fragment of Life_. Abridged, Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Alastair Hannay, p. 312 .Soren Kierkegaard
2
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.Soren Kierkegaard
3
Purity of heart is to will one thing.Soren Kierkegaard
4
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without but was within him all the time.Soren Kierkegaard
5
Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.Soren Kierkegaard
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Without risk faith is an impossibility.Soren Kierkegaard
7
Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.Soren Kierkegaard
8
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.Soren Kierkegaard
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The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.Soren Kierkegaard
10
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.Soren Kierkegaard
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Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.Soren Kierkegaard
12
What our age lacks is not reflection but passion.Soren Kierkegaard
13
If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense of the potential for the eye which ever young and ardent sees the possible. .. what wine is so sparkling so fragrant so intoxicating as possibility!Soren Kierkegaard
14
The tyrant dies and his rule is over the martyr dies and his rule begins.Soren Kierkegaard
15
Prayer does not change God but it changes him who prays.Soren Kierkegaard
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To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.Soren Kierkegaard
17
Teach me O God not to torture myself not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.Soren Kierkegaard
18
If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense of the potential for the eye which ever young and ardent sees the possible. .. what wine is so sparkling so fragrant so intoxicating as possibility!Soren Kierkegaard
19
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward.Soren Kierkegaard
20
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.Soren Kierkegaard
21
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.Soren Kierkegaard
22
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.Soren Kierkegaard
23
Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.Soren Kierkegaard
24
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.Soren Kierkegaard
25
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.Soren Kierkegaard
26
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.Soren Kierkegaard
27
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.Soren Kierkegaard
28
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.Soren Kierkegaard
29
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.Soren Kierkegaard
30
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.Soren Kierkegaard
31
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
32
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
33
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
34
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.Soren Kierkegaard
35
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.Soren Kierkegaard
36
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.Soren Kierkegaard
37
Once you label me you negate me.Soren Kierkegaard
38
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.Soren Kierkegaard