Søren Kierkegaard Quotes

155 Sourced Quotes

Of all ridiculous things in the world what strikes me as the most ridiculous of all is being busy in the world, to be a man quick to his meals and quick to his work.

Søren Kierkegaard
What the age needs is not a genius — it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour.

Søren Kierkegaard
Married people pledge love for each other throughout eternity. Well, now, that is easy enough but does not mean very much, for if one is finished with time one is probably finished with eternity. If, instead of saying "throughout eternity," the couple would say, "until Easter, until next May Day," then what they say would make some sense, for then they would be saying something and also something they perhaps could carry out.

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

Søren Kierkegaard
No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual...

Søren Kierkegaard
What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

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

Søren Kierkegaard
How close men, despite all their knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands on the outside, not until one lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate.

Søren Kierkegaard
And thus Christianity is played in Christendom. Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings—there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career—and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.

Søren Kierkegaard
A line by Thomas à Kempis which perhaps could be used as a motto sometime. He says of Paul: Therefore he turned everything over to God, who knows all, and defended himself solely by means of patience and humility.... He did defend himself now and then so that the weak would not be offended by his silence.

Søren Kierkegaard
For whoever has what he has from the God himself clearly has it at first hand; and he who does not have it from the God himself is not a disciple. Let us assume that it is otherwise, that the contemporary generation of disciples had received the condition from the God, and that the subsequent generations were to receive it from these contemporaries – what would follow?

Søren Kierkegaard
It is as useless for a person to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize its existence and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (gnothi seauton). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.

Søren Kierkegaard
Is not Christendom the most colossal attempt at serving God, not by following Christ, as He required, and suffering for the doctrine, but instead of that, by building the sepulchers of the prophets and garnishing the tombs of the righteous.

Søren Kierkegaard
The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament...

Søren Kierkegaard
The gods were bored and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase in population. Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were bored together; them Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the people were bored en masse.

Søren Kierkegaard
Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forward.

Søren Kierkegaard
Take away the paradox from a thinker and you have a professor.

Søren Kierkegaard
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.

Søren Kierkegaard
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Søren Kierkegaard
For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one's eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.

Søren 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.

Søren Kierkegaard
I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.

Søren Kierkegaard
Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.

Søren Kierkegaard
If you listen carefully, in what most definitely must be called Gospel you yourself will hear also rigorousness. For example, what Jesus says to the centurion from Capernaum, If we will apply these words to ourselves, we are obliged to say, Be it done for you as you believe; if you have faith unto salvation, then you will be saved. (Matthew 8:13) How lenient, how merciful! But is it also certain, then, that I have faith-I surely cannot summarily transfer to myself the fact that the centurion believed, as if I had faith because the centurion had it. Let us suppose that someone asked Christianity, Is it also certain, then, that I have faith? Christianity would answer, Be it done for you as you believe.

Søren Kierkegaard
Once a man acts in a decisive sense and comes out into reality, existence can get a grip on him and providence educate him.

Søren Kierkegaard
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.

Søren Kierkegaard
It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?

Søren Kierkegaard
One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states). How many people are just adjectives, interjections, conjunctions, adverbs? How few are substantives, active verbs, how many are copulas? Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular.

Søren Kierkegaard
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

Søren Kierkegaard
All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

Søren Kierkegaard