Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“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.”
“One must see how no attack is so feared as that of laughter... because more than any other this attack isolates the one attacked.”
“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.”
“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.”
“But, but, but here lies the difficulty. Precisely what the New Testament understands by Christianity and by being a Christian is-and this the New Testament makes no effort to conceal but emphasizes decisively-what most of all is repugnant to the natural man, is an offense to him, against which with wild passion and defiance he must revolt, or else cunningly try at any price to be rid of it, as for example by the help of a knavish trick, calling Christianity what is the exact opposite of Christianity, and then thanking God for Christianity and for the great and inestimable privilege of being a Christian. Attack On Christendom pp 150-3”
“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.”
“it is a sign of a magnanimous man of profound soul that he is disposed to repent, that he does not go to law with God but repents and loves God in his repentance. Without that his life is nothing, merely like foam on water.”
“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.”
“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.” Another translation says:”There are two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn't so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so.”
“veed Du da ikke, at der kommer en Midnatstime, hvor Enhver skal demaskere sig, troer Du, at Livet altid lader sig spøge med, troer Du, at man kan liste bort lidt før Midnat for at undgaae det?”
“Det gäller att finna en sanning, som är sanning för mig, att finna en idé för vilken jag vill leva och dö.”
“How far removed in time must an event be for us to remember it? How far for memory's longing to be no longer able to seize it? Most people have a limit in this respect: what lies too near them in time they cannot remember, nor what lies too remote. I know no limit. What was experienced yesterday, I push back a thousand years in time, and remember as if it were yesterday." ―Johannes de Silentio, from_Either/Or_”
“It doesn't appeal to experience, which of all laughable things is perhaps the most laughable and, far from making a man wise, if he knows nothing higher it will soon make him mad.”
“What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection.”
“It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it.”
“But you may be sure that for this faith in the victory of the beautiful I will engage in mortal combat, and nothing in the world can wrest it from me. Even if one wished to wrest if from me through prayer, to snatch it from me by force, not for anything in the world would I let myself be deprived f it, for if I lost that faith I would lose the whole world. Through this faith I see the beauty of life, and the beauty I see does not have the sadness and melancholy that are inseparable from all beauty in nature and art, inseparable even from the eternal youth of the Greek gods. The beauty I see is joyful and triumphant, and stronger than all the world. And this beauty I see everywhere, even where your eye sees nothing.”
“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.”
“Ничего не хочется... Ехать не хочется — слишком сильное движение: пешком идти не хочется — устанешь; лечь? — придется валяться попусту или снова вставать, а ни того, ни другого не хочется... Словом, ничего не хочется.”
topics: depression
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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.