Kierkegaard Quotes

Take it and return it: the kiss of love.

Just as in the great moment of resignation one does not mediate but chooses, now the task is to gain proficiency in repeating the impassioned choice and, existing, to express it in existence.

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.

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.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

God does not think; he creates. He does not exist; he is eternal.

This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.

My standpoint is armed neutrality.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.

Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief, but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief that sustains thought and holds the world together.

The truly simple way of presenting Christianity is to do it.

Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect.

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

Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.

Genius, like a thunderstorm, comes up against the wind.

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

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.

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

Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air.

If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.

It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.

Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.

The wisdom of the years is confusing. Only the wisdom of eternity is edifying.

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.

You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?

Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

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 is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time.

The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.

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

Only one human being recognized as one's neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love

Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, who so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility.

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.

What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.

Hope is a passion for the possible.

What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring

Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God.

With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.

With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.

Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humourist, then the religious person.

Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join the dance.

Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.

When all combine in every way to make everything easier, people will want difficulty. I conceived it as my task to make difficulties everywhere.

Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.