Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is... To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself.

I see it perfectly; there are two possible situations - once 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.

The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And then, remarkably enough, even though he lives amongst a 'Christian people,' he incurs the same peril as he did when it was dangerous to openly confess Christ. And because of the follower's life, it will become evident who the admirers are, for the admirers will become agitated with him. Even these words will disturb many - but then they must likewise belong to the admirers.

Christian heroism, and indeed one perhaps sees little enough of that, is to risk unreservedly being oneself, an individual human being, this specific individual human being alone before God, alone in this enormous exertion and this enormous accountability

Many and various are the things to which a man may feel himself drawn, but one thing there is to which no man ever felt himself drawn in any way, that is, to suffering and humiliation. This we men think we ought to shun as far as possible, and in any case that we must be compelled to it.

There was a young man favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for a Socrates but found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him into one. But now--he who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades was so humiliated and humbled by the gods' favor that, just when he received what he could be proud of, he felt inferior to all.

With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair.

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.

If the generations of man passed through the world like a ship passing through the sea and the wind over the desert—a fruitless and a vain thing; if eternal oblivion were ever greedily watching for its prey and there existed no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches—how empty were life then, and how dismal!

Thus to get the princess, to live with her joyfully and happily day in and day out (for it is also conceivable that the knight of resignation might get the princess, but that his soul had discerned the impossibility of their future happiness), thus to live joyfully and happily every instant by virtue of the absurd, every instant to see the sword hanging over the head of the beloved, and yet to find repose in the pain of resignation, but joy by virtue of the absurd—this is marvellous.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath 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

Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always present, is always true. Only the Eternal applies to each human being, whatever his age may be.

The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ....

tik?jim? tur?ti - pavyd?tina dalia, net jei niekas apie tai nežinot?. (7-8)

For the universal will constantly torture him and say, 'You ought to have talked. Where will you find the certainty that it was not after all a hidden pride which governed your resolution?

I am a fork, and I will stick you!

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.

Language is partly something originally given, partly that which develops freely. And just as the individual... can never reach the point at which he becomes absolutely independent ... so too with language.

I need the enchantment of creative work to help me forget life's mean pettiness.

What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed.

Truth always rests with the minority … 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.

Tenía una confidente íntima -mi melancolía-, y en medio de mi alegría, en medio de mi trabajo, ella me atrae, me llama a un lado aunque físicamente yo permanezca en el lugar. Es la más fiel amante que haya conocido.... Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers

One becomes weary only of what is new.

There is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety in the face of an unknown something.