Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

“I know not, but strained silence, so I deem, IS no less ominous than excessive grief.”

“There let her pray to the one god she worships: Death--who knows?--may just reprieve her from death. Or she may learn a last, better late than never, what a waste of breath it is to worship Death.”

“The working of the mind discover oft Dark deeds in darkness schemed, before the act. More hateful still the miscreant who seeks When caught, to make a virtue of a crime.”

“A superstitious belief which embraces an error keeps the possibility open that the truth may come to arouse it; but when the truth is there, and the superstitious mode of apprehending it transforms it into a lie, no saving awakening is possible.”

“No, like worldly contempt, worldly honor is a whirlpool, a play of confused forces, an illusory moment in the flux of opinions. It is a sense-deception, as when a swarm of insects at a distance seem to the eye like one body; a sense-deception, as when the noise of the many at a distance seems to the ear like a single voice.”

“The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.”

“The genius differs from us men in being able to endure isolation, his rank as a genius is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we men are constantly in need of "the others," the herd; we die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the herd, of the same opinion as the herd.”

“How to be listed as a dream in the mind of a young girl is an art, going out is a masterpiece.”

“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.”

“My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it.”

“Even though it be true that the conception of God is absolute help, it is also the only help which is absolutely capable of revealing to man his own helplessness.”

“one cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.”

“وفي حالة ذلك الشاب الغني الذي التقى به المسيح في الطريق وباع كل بضاعته وأعطى الفقير-فإننا ينبغي أن نمجده كما نمجد كل شئ عظيم-وإن كنا لا نستطيع أن نفهمه دون أن نكدح”

“The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the false knight is sectarian. This sectarianism is an attempt to leap away from the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a cheap price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. The sectarian punchinello, instead of that, has a private theatre, i.e. several good friends and comrades who represent the universal just about as well as the beadles in The Golden Snuffbox represent justice. The knight of faith, on the contrary, is the paradox, is the individual, absolutely nothing but the individual, without connections or pretensions. This is the terrible thing which the sectarian manikin cannot endure. For instead of learning from this terror that he is not capable of performing the great deed and then plainly admitting it (an act which I cannot but approve, because it is what I do) the manikin thinks that by uniting with several other manikins he will be able to do it. But that is quite out of the question. In the world of spirit no swindling is tolerated.”

“The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life’s swamp, will naturally cry out, “Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer’s widow is a match fully as good and respectable.” Let them croak.”

“Love has many mysteries, and this first infatuation is also a mystery, even if a minor one - most people who rush into it get engaged or indulge in other foolish pranks, and then it's all over with the twinkling of an eye and they don't know what they have conquered or what they have lost.”

“What is decisive is that with God everything is possible. . . This is indeed a generally recognized truth, which is commonly expressed in this way, but the critical decision does not come until a person is brought to his extremity, when, humanly speaking, there is no possibility. Then the question is whether he will believe that for God everything is possible...”

“الحق قوة، لكننا لا نراه هكذا إلا في حالات نادرة. لأنه حق يتألم دائماً ويجب أن يُهزم طالما هو حق· أما عندما ينتصر هذا الحق فنرى الآخرين ينصتون إليه· لماذا؟ ألأنه حق؟ لا، فلو كان لهذا السبب لانضموا إليه عندما كان يتألم أيضاً· ولهذا فإن عدم انضمامهم إليه ليس للقوة التي يمتلكها؛ إنهم ينضمون إليه بعد أن يصبح قوة لأن الآخرين يكونون قد سبقوهم لذلك.”

“To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.”

“It is now my intention to draw out from the story of Abraham the dialectical consequences inherent in it, expressing them in the form of problemata , in order to see what a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God, a paradox which gives Isaac back to Abraham, which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely there where thinking leaves off.”