Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith - when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith - this [is] subjectivity ... at its height.

Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.

Ulysses was not comely, but he was eloquent, Yet he fired two goddesses of the sea with love

Spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student.

The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.

No time of life is so beautiful as the early days of love, when with every meeting, every glance, one fetches something new home to rejoice over.

The person who praises God is on the tracks of justice.

Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.

I go fishing for a thousand monsters in the depths of my own self

All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

Men who not religious or artists are fools.

Dread is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.

In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation.

But the life of freedom requires a beginning, and here a beginning is a resolution, and the resolution has its work and its pain-thus the beginning has its difficulty.

One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.

Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection

For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.

... all comparisons injure.

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.

Those who dream must be awakened, and the deeper the people are who slumber, or the deeper they slumber, the more important it is that they be awakened, and the more powerfully must they be awakened.

It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.

Where there are two people, there is untruth.

To Dare is to risk losing your foothold for a moment, Not to Dare is to risk losing yourself.

Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent - then shall the rest be added unto you.

Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able.

To pace about, looking to obtain status, looking to attain 'importance' - I can think of nothing more ridiculous.

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.

I would have perished had I not perished.

Christians remind me of schoolboys who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through.

It is impossible to exist without passion

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

Intelligence has got the upper hand to such an extent that it transforms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play.

The great trick with a woman is to get rid of her while she think's she's rid of you.

Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular.

Men are not on such intimate terms with the sublime that they really can believe in it

My sorrow is my castle.

Sleeping is the height of genius

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world?

It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it?

The question of immortality is of its nature not a scholarly question. It is a question welling up from the interior which the subject must put to itself as it becomes conscious of itself.

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

To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.

To be a saint is to will the one thing.

Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.