Soren Kierkegaard famous quotes

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love #Life #Positive

Christ has not only spoken to us by his life but has also spoken for us by his death.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Easter #Christ

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Freedom #Thinking #People

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Change #Being Sad #Faces

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Life #Life Lesson #Force

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love #Heartbreak #Loss

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Beautiful #Life Lesson #Action

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Life Is Good #Bad Ass #Expression

Hope is passion for what is possible.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Hope #Passion

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Voice #Silence #Silent

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Eye #Self #Disbelievers

The question is not "To be or not to be," it is what we should be until we are not.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Should

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Patience #Be Patient #Reap

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Choices #World #Regulation

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#God #Children #Father

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Death #Tyrants #Political

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love #Prayer #Long

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Good Life #Roots #Evil

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Inspirational #People #Understanding

Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Past #People #Pleasure

Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Philosophy #Philosophical #Nurse

God creates everything out of nothing. And everything which God is to use, he first reduces to nothing
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Use #Firsts

Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Earnestness

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Long #Mind #Different

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Reality #Vision #Hints

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Frustration #Games #Pieces

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Faith #Inspiration #Silence

The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Despair #Form

Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Eye #Men #Thinking

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#War #Flower #Adversity

The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Christian #Teacher #Teaching

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Despair #Common #Spirituality

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Party #Long #Soul

Teach me, 0 God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Reflection #Breathe #Stifling

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Beautiful #Adversity #People

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.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Regret #Two #Advice

It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Passion #Lost

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Music #Beautiful #Heart

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Inspirational #Men #Heartache

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Unconditional Love #Love Is #Giving

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#God #Faith #Nature

When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, "It is talking to me, and about me".
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Biblical #Talking

A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Vision #Hints #Possibility

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Loss #Self #Wife

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Believe #Thinking #Fire

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Passion #Thinking #Feelings

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Ideas #Existentialism #Willing

Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask...
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Midnight #Hours

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Christian #Biblical #Easy

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Workout #Truth #Inspiration

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Teacher #Educational #May

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Legs #Knees #Different

The thing that cowardice fears most is decision
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Decision #Cowardice

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Roots #Evil #Boredom

The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Truth Is #Traps

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Courage #Men #Getting High

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#God #Believe #Grasping

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Happiness #Fear #Creativity

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Christian #Heart #Love Is

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Life Is #Backwards #Understood

Purity of heart is to will one thing.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Heart #Focus #Purity

Be that self which one truly is.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Knowledge #Self #Individuality

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Faith #Believe #Belief

Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love Is #Thinking #Expression

A road well begun is the battle half won. The important thing is to make a beginning and get under way.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Battle #Important #Way

...Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity ... is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men's lives.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Men #Being Real #Followers

What labels me, negates me.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Labels

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love #Life #Happiness

A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Prayer #Men #Talking

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#God #Prayer #Doe

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Life #Inspiring #Wisdom

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Relationship #Aquariums #Important

Once you label me you negate me.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Inspirational #Life #Names

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Happiness #Patience #Time

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.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Inspirational #Truth #Believe

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#God #Doe #Saint

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Positive Attitude #Interesting #World

It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Heart #Trying #Identity

Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself to the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire the truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to the truth there is an abridgement, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity for struggling for it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Christian #Dream #Struggle

It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Breathe

God has given each of us our "marching order." Our purpose here on Earth is to find those orders and carry them out. Those orders acknowledge our special gifts.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Order #Special #Earth

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Love #Sweet #Doe

I must find a truth that is true for me.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Happiness #Success

Without risk, faith is an impossibility.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Risk #Impossibility

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Opposites #Definitions #Sin

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Ignorance

You wanted God's ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Father #Heaven #Wish

To be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, etc.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Teacher #Mean

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

#Men #God Love