Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“Unless you grasp that it requires all the strength of spirit to die, that the hero always dies before his death, you will not come particularly far in your observations on life.”
topics: death
“Hence it is a superficial view (which presumably has never seen a person in despair, not even one’s own self) when it is said of a man in despair, "He is consuming himself." For precisely this it is he despairs of, and to his torment it is precisely this he cannot do, since by despair fire has entered into something that cannot burn, or cannot burn up, that is, into the self.”
“When around one everything has become silent, solemn as a clear, starlit night, when the soul comes to be alone in the whole world, then before one there appears, not an extraordinary human being, but the eternal power itself, then the heavens open, and the I chooses itself or, more correctly, receives itself. Then the personality receives the accolade of knighthood that ennobles it for an eternity.”
“So despair, then, and your frivolity shall never more cause you to roam like an inconstant spirit, like a ghost among the ruins of a world which is yet lost to you; despair, and your spirit shall become beautiful and joyous to you once more, though you now look at it with different eyes, and your spirit, now liberated, shall vault up into the world of freedom.”
“My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.”
“Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to have answered gravely: "It is granted thee.”
“Livet forstås baglæns, men må leves forlæns.”
“Kazna odgovara krivici: da nam bude uskraćeno svako zadovoljstvo življenja, da smo dovedeni do najvišeg stepena odvratnosti prema životu.”
“If man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in anxiety. Since he is both beast and angel, he can be in anxiety, and the greater the anxiety, the greater the man.”
topics: theconceptofanxiety
“The despairing man who is unconscious of being in despair is, in comparison with him who is conscious of it, merely a negative step further from the truth and from salvation.”
“Şcoala suferinţei e cea mai lungă, căci te pregăteşte pentru eternitate”
“A fé não constitui, portanto, um impulso de ordem estética; é de outra ordem muito mais elevada, justamente porque pressupõe a resignação. Não é o instinto imediato do coração, mas o paradoxo da vida.”
“Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?”
“In a theater it happened that a fire stated offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed- amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”
“Do not fly so high with your decisions that you forget that a decision is but a beginning. How wretched and miserable it is to find in a person many good intentions but few good deeds. And there are other dangers too, dangers of sin. With all your good intentions, you must not forget your duty, neither should you forget to do it with joy. And strive to carry your burdens and responsibilities in a surrendered way. If you don’t, there is a danger of losing your decisiveness; of going through life without courage and fading away in death.”
topics: provocations
“A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music.”
“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.”
“The majority of men are curtailed "I's"; what was planned by nature as a possibility capable of being sharpened into an I is soon dulled into a third person.”
“That one is in despair is not a rarity; no, it is rare, very rare, that one is…not in despair.”
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Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.