Søren Kierkegaard Quotes

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

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life...

Now she has power and passion and the struggle has significance for me-let the momentary consequence...

Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything.

What am I? The modest narrator who accompanies your triumphs; the dancer who supports you when you r...

I have a secret to confide to you, my confidante. Who should I confide it to? To Echo? She would bet...

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays...

Satan's despair is absolute because Satan, as pure spirit, is pure consciousness, and for Satan (and...

For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequa...

How far removed in time must an event be for us to remember it? How far for memory's longing to be n...

I am poor—you are my riches; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. And how could I own...

[The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must...

If I could forget you! Is my love then a work of memory? Even if time expunged everything from its t...

As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, an...

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it ...

Don't forget to love yourself.

I am poor—you are my riches; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. And how could I own...

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath forth their love for...

Love is everything. So, for one who loves, everything has ceased to have meaning in itself and only ...

My love consumes me. Only my voice is left, a voice which has fallen in love with you whispers to yo...

What am I? The modest narrator who accompanies your triumphs; the dancer who supports you when you r...

Yet in another and still more definite sense despair is the sickness unto death. It is indeed very f...

So now begins the first war with Cordelia' in which I retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious...

What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics ...

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!

Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and s...

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will ...

Prayer is listening.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people beco...

People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. That is a comp...

If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other h...

Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accompli...

The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone...

A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the go...

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.

Everyone take his revenge on the world. My revenge consists in bearing my distress and anguish enclo...

Every individual, however original he may be, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of...

When indeed does the temporal suffering oppress a man most terribly? Is it not when it seems to him ...

Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know ...

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

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

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. T...

But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the ...

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, e...

No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have.

The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become ...

The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And then, remarkably enough, even ...

To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highes...

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is...

The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in ...

Riches and abundance come hypocritically clad in sheep's clothing, pretending to be security against...

For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service o...

Sitting calmly on a ship in fair weather is not a metaphor for having faith; but when the ship has s...

How dreadful boredom is — how dreadfully boring; I know no stronger expression, no truer one, for li...

With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the p...

If this had not been the case with Abraham, then perhaps he might have loved God but notbelieved; fo...

To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectant...

Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in t...

Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief...

Hence it is a superficial view (which presumably has never seen a person in despair, not even one’s ...

It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly n...

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

By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by b...

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret suffrings, but whose lips are so strangely ...

It is comic that a mentally disordered man picks up any piece of granite and carries it around becau...

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in everygeneration may not come that far, but no...

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a ...

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

Teach me O God not to torture myself not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflecti...

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they ...

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense...

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

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's kne...

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life...

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but n...

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fi...

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, b...

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies ...

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

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale....

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

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are ...

A person who speaks like a book is exceedingly boring to listen to; sometimes, however, it is not in...

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

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

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to pa...

What our age lacks is not reflection but passion.

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense...

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

Once you label me you negate me.

The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.

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