Sören Kierkegaard Quotes

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309 Quotes on Life's Complexities, Freedom, and Essence of Humanity

“Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go.”

“A line by Thomas à Kempis which perhaps could be used as a motto sometime.”

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self.”

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

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”

“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”

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

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

“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”

“It is impossible to exist without passion”

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

“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.”

“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.”

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

“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.”

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.”

“On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart”

“Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection”

“Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

“I stick my finger into existence and it smells of nothing.”

“The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”

“… why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?”

“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together.”

“Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.”

“My sorrow is my castle.”

“A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.”

“I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.”

“Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!”

“Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.”

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”

“My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.”

“Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.”

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.”

“My standpoint is armed neutrality.”

“If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.”

“Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended…. Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored….”

“In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.”

“Hope is a passion for the possible.”

“Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?”

“What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”

“To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.”

“It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.”

“to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.”

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