Inspiring Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
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Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.

Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.

Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe.

Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.

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.

There is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise -- an undivided will.

My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.

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

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

May new sufferings torment your soul.

That is the road we all have to take -- over the Bridge of Sight into eternity.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. ... My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven -- in the spring at the earth.

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

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.

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.

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.

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than The Individual.

A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.

The thing that cowardice fears most is decision.

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.

This is the miracle of life: that each person who heeds him or herself knows what no scientist can ever know: who he or she is.

One should engage in all sorts of breadless arts.

What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?

A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.

Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.

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.

Take it and return it: the kiss of love.

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.

Without risk, faith is an impossibility.

Hope is passion for what is possible.

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.

Hope is a passion for the possible.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

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

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

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

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

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.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

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

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

Once you label me you negate me.

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

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

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

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

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

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

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

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.

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

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