Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“Jeg kommer netop nu fra et Selskab, hvor jeg var Sjælen; Vittigheder strømmede ud fra min Mund, alle loe, beundrede mig - men jeg gik, ja den Tankestreg bør være ligesaa lang som Jordbanens Radier ------------------------------- hen og ville skyde mig selv.”
“Ja savršeno nisam ni za šta. Ne mogu da jašem konja, on se suviše oštro kreće; ne mogu da hodam, to je prenaporno; ne mogu da legnem, jer bih morao ostati da ležim, a to ne mogu, ili bih morao opet ustati, a ni to ne mogu. Summa summarum: ja savršeno nisam ni za šta.”
“Yet in another and still more definite sense despair is the sickness unto death. It is indeed very far from being true that, literally understood, one dies of this sickness, or that this sickness ends with bodily death. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die So it has much in common with the situation of the moribund when he lies and struggles with death, and cannot die. So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die -- yet not as though there were hope of life; no the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one’s hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die.”
“Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. A person keeps this anxiety at distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin as friends, but the anxiety is still there.”
“Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action....The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented--and then do nothing.”
“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.”
“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
“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.”
Group of Brands
© 2026 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
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.