Quotes About Individuality

The one knight of faith can render no aid to the other.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

The majority of men are curtailed I's; what was planned by nature as a possibility capable of being sharpened into an I is soon dulled into a third person.

Every person shudders at becoming a personality, shudders at standing as a personality vis-à-vis others?he shudders at it because he knows very well that this makes it possible for the others to catch sight of him. The human being shudders at becoming manifest; thus he loves, if not pitch darkness, then at any rate twilight, mystification, impersonality.

La mayoría de los hombres se desesperarían si se les dijera cuán infinitamente rica es la existencia, y que un hombre, un solo hombre, basta, lo es todo, y que con él los más grandes acontecimientos son posibles.

In the constant sociability of our age people shudder at solitude to such a degree that they know no other use to put it to but (oh, admirable epigram!) as a punishment for criminals. But after all it is a fact that in our age it is a crime to have spirit, so it is natural that such people, the lovers of solitude, are included in the same class with criminals.

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.

None has more contempt for what it is to be a man than they who make it their profession to lead the crowd.

to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time it is eternity's demand upon him.

Oh, to what degree human beings would become—human and lovable beings—if they would become single individuals before God!

Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss . . . Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

El prójimo es la completamente incognoscible diversidad entre ser humano y ser humano, o bien es la eterna igualdad ante Dios.

Indivizii nu erau altceva pentru el decât niÅŸte stimulente;ÅŸi îndat? ce acÅ£iunea provocat? de ei se consuma,el se debarasa de aceÅŸtia.

Surrounded by hordes of people, busy with all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world – such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too risky to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, part of the crowd.

Ningún caballero de la fe puede ayudar a otro. O bien se convierte el mismo Particular en caballero de la fe, pues cargó con la paradoja, o bien no llega nunca a serlo. En esa esfera resulta impensable cualquier compañerismo.

It's not like I got caught masturbating, for chrissake; she doesn't know me, why the hell would she care if I'm superstitious? - Karen

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.

We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.

perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.

This may be the curse of human race . Not that we are different from one anther , but we are so alike .

From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence.

I, too, have ropes around my neck. I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. I buck, I snort, I whinny, I rear, Ikick. Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Doyou hear? I refuse to choose.

Most people define themselves by their work, or where they come from, or suchlike; we had lived too far inside our heads. It makes actuality damn hard to handle.

If I seem a little bizarre, remember the wild profusion of my inheritance...perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.