Sören Kierkegaard: Trending quotes (page 8)

“People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.”

“Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.”

“Only the person who is essentially capable of remaining silent is capable of speaking essentially.”

“It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not.”

“Sleeping is the height of genius”

“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.”

“For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.”

“Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.”

“I'm so misunderstood that people misunderstand me even when I tell them I'm misunderstood.”

“Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.”

“I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.”

“In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation.”

“a. Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth? by H. H.”

“From the Christian point of view it stands firm that the truly Christian venturing requires probability. p. 101”

“If the ethical – that is, social morality – is the highest … then no categories are needed other than the Greek philosophical categories.”

“A white spot is on the horizon. There it is. A terrible storm is brewing. But no one sees the write spot or has any inkling of what it might mean. But no (this would not be the most terrible situation either), no, there is one person who sees it and knows what it means-but he is a passenger. He has no authority on the ship, can take no action. … The fact that in Christendom there is visible on the horizon a white speck which means that a storm is threatening-this I knew; but, alas, I was an am only a passenger.”

“The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas: they ought to be his daily life. If so – this is the view of Christianity – then you, too, will have eloquence enough and precisely that which is needed when you speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is fallacious eloquence if someone, without otherwise occupying himself with, without living in these thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, perhaps in the field of literature, and then works them into a well-composed discourse, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and gestures.”

“Posito I assume and when I say posito, I have the right to assume the unlikely; therefore posito, I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. Posito, I assume, and when I say posito, I have the right to assume what is more unreasonable than the most unreasonable; therefore; posito, I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it-then what? Let us linger for a moment on this thought, with which, of course, we have all been familiar for several years: the thought of the prospect for the hope of the system. Therefore, in order to be very brief, posito, I assume that the system appeared here in Copenhagen, then what? Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view; then we would again be saved by the promise. If this does not happen, then of course one would have to read it. How troublesome, and who would finally benefit from that?”

“If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.”