Quotes By Soren Kierkegaard

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

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

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

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

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

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

Be that self which one truly is.

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

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.

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

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

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

Once you label me you negate me.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

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

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Don't forget to love yourself.

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

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.

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

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

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

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