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

“There is no one at the Communion table who retains against you even the least of your sins, no one, unless you yourself do it. So cast them away from yourself, and the recollection of them, lest in it your retain them; and cast the recollection of your having cast your sins away, lest in it you retain them. P. 170”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

“He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in his the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 60

“The Spirit brings faith, the faith.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 81
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), It Is the Spirit Who Gives Life

Faith

Sören Kierkegaard

1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)

Life , Christ

“In vain do individual great men seek to mint new concepts and to set them in circulation — it is pointless. They are used for only a moment, and not by many, either, and they merely contribute to making the confusion even worse, for one idea seems to have become the fixed idea of the age: to get the better of one's superior. If the past may be charged with a certain indolent self-satisfaction in rejoicing over what it had, it would indeed be a shame to make the same charge against the present age (the minuet of the past and the gallop of the present). Under a curious delusion, the one cries out incessantly that he has surpassed the other, just as the Copenhageners, with philosophic visage, go out to Dyrehausen "in order to see and observe," without remembering that they themselves become objects for the others, who have also gone out simply to see and observe. Thus there is the continuous leap-frogging of one over the other — "on the basis of the immanent negativity of the concept", as I heard a Hegelian say recently, when he pressed my hand and made a run preliminary to jumping. — When I see someone energetically walking along the street, I am certain that his joyous shout, "I am coming over," is to me — but unfortunately I did not hear who was called (this actually happened); I will leave a blank for the name, so everyone can fill in an appropriate name.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Journals IA 328, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men , Age , Idea , Past

“If self-knowledge does not lead to knowing oneself before God - well, then there is something to what purely human self-observation says, namely, this self-knowledge leads to a certain emptiness that produces dizziness. Only by being before God can one totally come to oneself in the transparency of soberness. p. 106”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

God , Knowledge

“Let us then in the brief prescribed moments simply consider the tax collector. Throughout all the ages he has been presented as the prototype of an honest and God-fearing churchgoer. Yet is seems to me that he is even more closely related to going to Communion, he who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Is it not as if he were now going to Communion, he of whom it is said, “He went home to his house justified””

Sören Kierkegaard

is it not as if he now went home from Communion!
Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 128
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

God , Age , Fear , Home

“Now just as the historical gives occasion for the contemporary to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself, since otherwise we speak Socratically, so the testimony of contemporaries gives occasion for each successor to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 75

God

“Let us suppose that a man believes in eternal life on Christ’s word. In that case he believes without any fuss about being profound and searching and philosophical and racking his brains.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 103

Life , Search , Christ

“There must have been many who had a relationship to Jesus similar to that of Barabbas (his name was Jesus Barrabas). The Danish "Barrabas" is about the same as "N. N." [Mr. X or John Doe], filius patris, his father's son. — It is too bad, however, that we do not know anything more about Barrabas; it seems to me that in many ways he could have become a counterpart to the Wandering Jew. The rest of his life must have taken a singular turn. God knows whether or not he became a Christian.”

Sören Kierkegaard

It would be a poetic motif to have him, gripped by Christ's divine power, step forward and witness for him.
Journals IIA 346 (1 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Life , God , Way , Christ

“My hearers, this discourse has not wandered out into the world to look for conflict, it has not tried to get the better of anybody, it has not even tried to uphold anybody, as though there was battle without. It has spoken to you; not by way of explaining anything to you, but trying to speak secretly with you about your relationship to that secret wisdom mentioned in our text. Oh that nothing may upset you in respect to this, “neither life nor death nor things present nor things to come nor any other creature” (Romans 8:38) –not this discourse, which, though it may have profited you nothing, yet has striven for what after all is the first and the last, to help you have what the Scripture calls “faith in yourself before God” (Romans 14:22).”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Sermon Preached at Trinitatis Kirke, 1844, P. 173

Life , Death , Wisdom , God

“That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty – no, he chose poverty.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 67
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), Christ is the Way

Way , Christ

“When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.
In "Christendom" the situation is a different one. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, and the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be disposed of.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 97

People , World , Religion , Country

“The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.””

Sören Kierkegaard book Stages on Life's Way

Stages on Life's Way, p. 161-162
1840s, Stages on Life's Way (1845)

Love , God , Confidence , Imagination

“If God stops a man on the road, and calls him with a revelation and sends him armed with divine authority among men, they say to him; from whom dost thou come? He answers: from God. But now God cannot help his messenger physically like a king, who gives him soldiers or policemen, or his ring or his signature, which is known to all; in short, God cannot help men by providing them with physical certainty that an Apostle is an Apostle-which would, moreover, be nonsense. Even miracles, if the Apostle has that gift, give no physical certainty; for the miracle is the object of faith.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 95

Men , God , Faith , Help

“Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle, like the Jews; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Swenson, 1959, p. 27
1840s, Either/Or (1843)

Love , Men , God , Hate

“Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of modern philosophy, every Privatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and ill-timed to ask them where they are going.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Preface
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Age , World , Idea , Question

“However well-meaning and strong the individual man may be (if he could only use his strength), he still has not the passion to be able to tear himself from the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection. Nor do his surroundings supply the events or produce the general enthusiasm necessary in order to free him. Instead of coming to his help, his milieu forms around him a negative intellectual opposition, which juggles for a moment with a deceptive prospect, only to deceive him in the end by pointing to a brilliant way out of the difficulty-by showing him that the shrewdest thing of all is to do nothing.”

Sören Kierkegaard

The Present Age and of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, translated by Alexander Dru (1962)
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

Way , Tear , Strong , Passion

“What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity, and how have they confused Christianity? Quite briefly and categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into the sphere of aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in brings Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Of The Difference Between A Genius And An Apostle, Alexander Dru translation 1962 p. 89
1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849)

Religion , Error

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

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849), p. 161

Love , God

“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.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 37
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses (1843-1844)

God , Idea

“Alas, time comes and time goes, it subtracts little by little; then it deprives a person of a good, the loss of which he indeed feels, and his pain is great. Alas, and he does not discover that long ago it has already taken away from him the most important thing of all-the capacity to make a resolution-and it has made him so familiar with this condition that there is no consternation over it, the last thing that could help gain new power for renewed resolution!”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), p. 48

Pain , Feeling , Loss , Time

“If someone were to expound that godliness is to belong to childhood in the temporal sense and thus dwindle and die with the years as childhood does, is to be a happy frame of mind that cannot be preserved but only recollected; if someone were to expound that repentance as a weakness of old age accompanies the decline of one’s powers, when the senses are dulled, when sleep no longer strengthens but increases lethargy-this would be ungodliness and foolishness.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 12
1840s

Age , Sense , Sleep , Childhood

“People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals?”

Sören Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 327
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847)

People , Forgetting

“What if the equality between us human being, in which we completely resemble one another, were that none of us really thinks about his being loved? Preface P. 166”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Love , Thinking

“In the Church which was founded at Corinth, St. Paul had special difficulties of the kind I have mentioned. In that flourishing commercial city, which through its shipping and situation, maintained a vital connexion between East and West, numerous crowds of people flocked together from all quarters, different in speech and in culture. As they mingled with the inhabitants, they produced, by contacts and contrasts, new and ever new differences. Even in the Church this differentiation endeavoured to make itself felt in sects and parties; and a kind of pagan wisdom made a special attempt to force itself forward as a teacher of truth. In his first letter to this church, from which the text I read is taken, St. Paul strongly combats this tendency.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Sermon Preached at Trinitatis Kirke, 1844, P. 162

Wisdom , People , Truth , Teachers

“He fixed his definition thus: reflection is the possibility of the relation, consciousness is the relation, the first form of which is contradiction. He soon noted that, as a result, the categories of reflection are always dichotomous. For example ideality and reality, soul and body, to recognize – the true, to will – the good, to love – the beautiful, God and the world, and so on, these are categories of reflection. In reflection, these touch each other in such a way that a relation becomes possible. The categories of consciousness, on the other hand, are trichotomous, as language itself indicates, for when I say I am conscious of this, I mention a trinity. Consciousness is mind and spirit, and the remarkable thing is that when in the world of mind or spirit one is divided, it always becomes three and never two. Consciousness, therefore, presupposes reflection. If this were not true it would be impossible to explain doubt. True, language seems to contest this, since in most languages, as far as he knew, the word ‘doubt’ is etymologically related to the word ‘two’. Yet in his opinion this only indicated the presupposition of doubt, especially because it was clear to him that as soon as I, as spirit, become two, I am eo ipso three. If there were nothing but dichotomies, doubt would not exist, for the possibility of doubt lies precisely in that third which places the two in relation to each other. One cannot therefore say that reflection produces doubt, unless one expressed oneself backwards; one must say that doubt presupposes reflection, though not in a temporal sense. Doubt arises through a relation between two, but for this to take place the two must exist, although doubt, as a higher expression, comes before rather than afterwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Johannes Climacus (1841) p. 80-81
1840s, Johannes Climacus (1841)

Love , God , World , Beauty

“Christ calls it (O give heed!), He calls it “hypocrisy.” And not only that, but He says (now shudder!), He says that this guilt of hypocrisy is as great, precisely as great a crime as that of killing the prophets. … This then is the judgment, Christ's judgment upon "Christendom."”

Sören Kierkegaard

Shudder; for if you do not, you are implicated in it.
Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 122

Christ

“Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), p. 83

Life , Death , Drink , Personality

“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.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 121

Teachers , Appearance

“What is asked of a man that he may be able to pray for his enemies? To pray for one’s enemies is the hardest thing of all. That is why it exasperates us so much in our present day situation.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Journals and Papers X4A 435
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

“The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Preface
1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844)

Question

“In the New Testament sense, to be a Christian is, in an upward sense, as different from being a man as, in a downward sense, to be a man is different from being a beast. A Christian in the sense of the New Testament, although he stands suffering in the midst of life’s reality, has yet become completely a stranger to this life; in the words of the Scripture and also of the Collects (which still are read-O bloody satire!-by the sort of priests we now have, and in the ears of the sort of Christians that now live) he is a stranger and a pilgrim-just think, for example of the late Bishop Mynster intoning, “We are strangers and pilgrims in this world”! A Christian in the New Testament sense is literally a stranger and a pilgrim, he feels himself a stranger, and everyone involuntarily feels that this man is a stranger to him.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Attack Upon Christianity, The Instant, No. 7, Søren Kierkegaard, 1854-1855, Walter Lowrie 1944, 1968
1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855)

Life , World , Feeling , Thinking

“A genius and an Apostle are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 90-91

“Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.”

Sören Kierkegaard

1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)

“Source: Without Authority by Soren Kierkegaard, Hong 1997 P. 145ff”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850

“The next thing you can learn from the woman who was a sinner, something she herself understood, is that with regard to finding forgiveness she is able to do nothing at all. P. 155”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850

Forgiveness , Learning

“He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 57

God , Understanding

“This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication? p. 112”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

God , Way

“Editor’s Preface In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous author to the supreme ideality. Yet the requirement should indeed be stated, presented, and heard. From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it-instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard-and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone—so that I might learn not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace. S. K.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. xii

Books , Understanding , Learning , Personality

“Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Papers VI B 66, 1845
1840s

Flowers , Nature , Knowledge , Decision

“You have surely noticed among schoolboys, that the one that is regarded by all as the boldest is the one who has no fear of his father, who dares to say to the others, "Do you think I am afraid of him?" On the other hand, if they sense that one of their number is actually and literally afraid of his father, they will readily ridicule him a little. Alas, in men’s fear-ridden rushing together into a crowd (for why indeed does a man rush into a crowd except because he is afraid!) there, too, it is a mark of boldness not to be afraid, not even of God. And if someone notes that there is an individual outside the crowd who is really and truly afraid – not of the crowd, but of God, he is sure to be the target of some ridicule. The ridicule is usually glossed over somewhat and it is said: a man should love God. Yes, to be sure, God knows that man’s highest consolation is that God is love and that man is permitted to love Him. But let us not become too forward, and foolishly, yes, blasphemously, dismiss the tradition of our fathers, established by God Himself: that really and truly a man should fear God. This fear is known to the man who is himself conscious of being an individual, and thereby is conscious of his eternal responsibility before God.”

Sören Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, 1847 Steere translation p. 196-197
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Love , Men , God , Fear

“It is love that leniently and mercifully says: I forgive you everything-if you are forgiven only little, then it is because you love only little. Justice severely sets the boundary and says: No further! This is the limit. For you there is no forgiveness, and there is nothing more to be said. P. 172”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Love , Justice , Forgiveness

“I assume that Luther has risen from the grave. For several years now he has been living among us but incognito; he has been observing the lives we lead, has been scrutinizing everyone in this regard and me also. I assume that he speaks to me one day and says, “Are you a believer? Do you have faith?” Anyone who knows me as an author will see that I would perhaps be the one who might come off best of all in such and examination, for I have continually said, “I do not have faith” – I have expressed, as does a bird’s alarmed flight before a storm, that there is mischief brewing here, “I do not have faith.” So I should say to Luther, “No, dear Luther, I have at least shown the respect of saying: I do not have faith.” However, I shall not press this, but, just as others call themselves Christians and believers, I, too, shall say, “I am a believer,” for otherwise what I wish to be cleared up will not be cleared up.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 17-18
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Faith , Bird

“That a woman is presented as a teacher, as a prototype of piety, cannot amaze anyone who knows that piety or godliness is fundamentally womanliness. … from a woman you learn concern for the one thing needful, from Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat silent at Christ’s feet with her heart’s choice: the one thing needful. P. 149”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850

Sister , Learning , Teachers , Heart

“If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. … We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. … Which deception is more dangerous?”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Works of Love (1847), p. 5

Love , Thinking

“My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?”

Sören Kierkegaard

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 63

Love , Heart

“How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.”

Sören Kierkegaard

opening prayer, p. 3
1840s, Works of Love (1847)

Love , God

“I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.”

Sören Kierkegaard

PV, p. 73; SV1, XIII, p. 559; Jon Bartley Stewart. 2008. Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher, Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political Thinker. Museum Tusculanum Press.
Disputed

God

“This is the truth of the matter. In every human being there is a capacity, the capacity for knowledge. And every person - the most knowing and the most limited - is in his knowledge far beyond what he is in his life or what his life expresses. Yet this misrelation is of little concern to us. On the contrary, we set a high price on knowledge, and everyone strives for this knowledge more and more. "But," says the sensible person, "one must be careful about the direction one's knowing takes. If my knowing turns inward, against me, if I do not take care to prevent this, then knowing is the most intoxicating thing there is, the way to become completely intoxicated, since there then occurs an intoxicating confusion between the knowledge and the knower, so that the knower himself will resemble, will be, that which is known. If your knowing takes such a turn and you yield to it, it will soon end with your tumbling like a drunk man into actuality, plunging yourself recklessly into drunken action without giving the understanding and sagacity the time to take into proper consideration what is prudent, what is advantageous, what will pay. This is why we, the sober ones, warn you, not against knowing or against expanding your knowledge, but against letting your knowledge take an inward direction, for then it is intoxicating." This is thieves' jargon. It says that it is one's knowledge that, by taking the inward direction in this way, intoxicates, rather than that in precisely this way it makes manifest that one is intoxicated, intoxicated in one's attachment to this earthly life, the temporal, the secular, and the selfish. And this is what one fears, fears that one's knowing, turned inward, toward oneself, will expose the intoxication there, will expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this state and as a result of such a step will make it impossible for one to slip back into that adored state, into intoxication. p. 118”

Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

Life , Truth , Fear , Way