Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

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

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Without risk faith is an impossibility.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

What our age lacks is not reflection but passion.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

~ 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 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

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

~ 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

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Once you label me you negate me.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard

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

~ Soren Kierkegaard