Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

A tr?it întâmpl?ri destul de triste,în general lucruri care-Å£i taie cheful de p?l?vr?geal? ordinar?.Tat?l ÅŸi mama ei n-au fost fericiÅ£i împreun?.Ceea ce pe o fat? oarecare o atrage,pe ea o las? indiferent?.S-ar p?rea chiar s? nu ÅŸtie care e rolul adev?rat al unei fete.Poate c? uneori îÅŸi doreÅŸte s? nu fie fat?,ci b?iat.

Bulutlar?n h?zl? uçuÅŸlar?, ???k ve karanl???n birbirini kovalamas? beni öylesine sarhoÅŸ eder ki uyan?k olduÄŸum halde düÅŸ görürüm

AÅŸk için her ÅŸey imgedir; ama imge de hakikattir.

When a peculiar thinker, who just by his peculiarity is more tied up with the Eternal and less with time's moment, addresses his speech to men, he is rarely understood or listened to.

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.

In order to help another effectively I must understand more than he – yet first of all surely I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him. If, however, I am disposed to plume myself on my greater understanding, it is because I am vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefiting him, I want to be admired.

for he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself he who loves God believingly reflects upon God.

Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor; and when the priest says, Sell all that thou hast and...give it to me?

It is not truth that rules the world but illusions.

One must see how laughter is feared above all other sorts of attack, how even a man who had boldly encountered mortal peril for a cause that did not concern him, would hardly hesitate to betray father and mother in case the danger were laughter.

Believe a woman, you will regret it, believe her not, you will also regret that; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both; whether you believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both. ... This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy.

But Abraham believed, therefore he was young; for he who always hopes for the best becomes old, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old early, but he who believes preserves an eternal youth.

By comparison with a passionate age, an age without passion gains in scope what is loses in intensity .

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance.

On principle' one can do anything and what one does is, fundamentally, a matter of indifference, just as a man's life remains insignificant even though 'on principle' he gives his support to all the 'needs of the times.

Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

Of a man who only wills the Good out of fear of punishment, it is necessary to say with special emphasis, that he fears what a man should not and ought not to fear: loss of money, loss of reputation, misjudgment by others, neglect, the world's judgment, the ridicule of fools, the laughter of the frivolous, the cowardly whining of consideration, the inflated triviality of the moment, the fluttering mist-forms of vapor.

Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the sickness of the soul (sin) does not consume it as sickness of the body consumes the body. So also we can demonstrate the eternal in man from the fact that despair cannot consume his self, that this precisely is the torment of contradiction in despair. If there were nothing eternal in a man, he could not despair; but if despair could consume his self, there would still be no despair.

All this is only fooling, for if it is true that every man must work for his own salvation, then all the prophecies about the future of the world are only valuable and allowable as a recreation, or a joke, like playing bowls or cards.

If the sphere of paradox-religion is abolished, or explained away in aesthetics, an Apostle becomes neither more nor less than a genius, and then--good night, Christianity! Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and originality, a call from God and genius, all end by meaning more or less the same thing.

It may happen, however, that he falls into despair just for the fact that he has opened his heart to another; it may be that he thinks it would have been infinitely preferable to maintain silence rather than have anyone privy to his secret. There are examples of introverts who are brought to despair precisely because they have acquired a confidant.

But now how can an Apostle prove that he has authority? If he could prove it physically , then he would not be an Apostle. He has no other proof than his own statement. That has to be so; for otherwise the believer's relationship to him would be direct instead of being paradoxical.

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all–what then would life be but despair?

For every single individual who escapes into the crowd... flees in cowardice from being a single individual.