Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“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.”
“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.”
“Skal man hjelpe en annen, må man først finne ut hvor han er, og møte ham der. Dette er det første bud i all sann hjelpekunst.”
“…when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.”
“our Lord satisfied the stomach before satisfying the eye, but the imagination acts in the reverse fashion”
topics: kierkegaard
“A choice that is not used is worse than nothing; it is a snare in which a person has trapped himself as a slave who did not become free”
“Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief - in all eternity, that I cannot do. But one thing I can do: I can compel him to become aware.”
“... joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all, even their lives... proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating...absorbed in themselves and in working towards their higher goal.”
“Existen dos maneras de ser engañados: una es creer lo que no es verdad y la otra es negarse a aceptar lo que sí lo es".”
“The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.”
“... when the ambitious man whose slogan is 'Either Caesar or nothing' does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.”
“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.”
“There is so much talk about being offended by christianity because it is so dark and gloomy, offended because it is so rigorous etc. But it would be best of all to explain for once that the real reason that men are offended by christianity is that it is too high, because its goal is not man's goal, because it wants to make man into something so extraordinary that he cannot grasp the thought.”
“Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?”
“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
“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.”
“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.