Søren Kierkegaard citations (319 citations, Page 10)

Preface Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 111 (From Without Authority)
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

“Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn—and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness—all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are truth, only you, our Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do—that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself—from on high, but through lowliness and abasement.”

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Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. 157

“I have never worked as hard as now. I go for a brief walk in the morning. Then I come home and sit in my room without interruption until about three o’clock. My eyes can barely see. Then with my walking stick in hand I sneak off to the restaurant, but am so weak that I believe that if somebody were to call out my name, I would keel over and die. Then I go home and begin again. In my indolence during the past months I had pumped up a veritable shower bath, and now I have pulled the string and the ideas are cascading down upon me: healthy, happy, merry, gay, blessed children born with ease and yet all of them with the birthmark of my personality.”

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Letter from Berlin to Emil Boesen, May 25, 1843, Letter 82
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”

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Sören Kierkegaard livre Stages on Life's Way

Stages on Life's Way, 1845 p. 363-364
1840s, Stages on Life's Way (1845)

“To become sober is: to come to oneself in self-knowledge and before God as nothing before him, yet infinitely, unconditionally engaged. P. 104”

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1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

“Someone in despair despairs over something. So, for a moment, it seems, but only for a moment. That same instant the true despair shows itself, or despair in its true guise. In despairing over something he was really despairing over himself, and he wants now to be rid of himself.”

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Source: 1840s, The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849), p. 49

“It is of this sort of divine service I used the expression that, in comparison with the Christianity of the New Testament, it is playing Christianity. The expression is essentially true and characterizes the thing perfectly. For what does it mean to play, when one reflects how the word must be understood in this connection? It means to imitate, to counterfeit, a danger when there is no danger, and to do it in such a way that the more art is applied to it, the more delusive the pretense is that the danger is present.”

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

“My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! If you do so, allow me to thank you for it: if you not only do it yourself, if you also influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!”

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Preface
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851)

“Socrates did not stop with a philosophical consideration of mankind; he addressed himself to each one individually, wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty-handed.”

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Source: 1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841), p. 173

“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. (Dialectic - Dispute)”

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Journals of Søren Kierkegaard 1A75, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

“I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them. P. 173-174”

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

“b. The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle. by H. H.”

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1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849)

“Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity’s memory.”

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Sören Kierkegaard livre Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Against Cowardliness p. 351
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

“Man is a synthesis of psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is the temporal?”

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Source: 1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844), p. 85

“In the external, patience is some third element that must be added, and, humanly speaking, it would be better if it were not needed; some days it is needed more, some days less, all according to fortune, whose debtor a person becomes, even though he gained ever so little, because only when he wants to gain patience does he become one’s debtor.”

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Sören Kierkegaard livre Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 168
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

“I will not by suppression, or by performing tricks, try to produce the impression that the ordinary Christianity in the land and the Christianity of the New Testament are alike.”

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"What Do I Want?"
1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855)

“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.”

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17 January 1837 http://books.google.com/books?id=2iwmAQAAMAAJ&q=%22There+are+many+people+who+reach+their+conclusions+about+life+like+schoolboys+they+cheat+their+master+by+copying+the+answer+out+of+a+book+without+having+worked+out+the+sum+for+themselves%22&pg=PA53#v=onepage <br class="br">1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

“Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.”

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Note, p. 58
1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

“Everyone who knows something about the dangers of reflection and the dangerous walk along the road of reflection also knows that it is dubious when a person, instead of getting out of the tension through resolution and action, becomes productive about his state in tension. Then there is no effort to get out of the state, but reflection fixes the situation for reflection and thereby fixes the man. The more richly thoughts and expressions offer themselves, the more briskly the productivity advances-in the wrong direction-the more dangerous it becomes and the more it hides from the person, concerned that his work, his extremely strenuous work, his very interesting (perhaps also for a third party who has a total view) work, is a work of bogging himself down deeper and deeper. That is, he does not work himself loose but works himself fast and becomes interesting to himself by reflecting on the tension and diverts himself with an utterly piecemeal productivity about detached details, with isolated short articles.”

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The Book of Adler, by Søren Kierkegaard, Hong 1998 p. 127
1840s, The Book on Adler (1846-1847)

“After all, in the poets love has its priests, and sometimes one hears a voice which knows how to defend it; but of faith one hears never a word. Who speaks in honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits rouged at the window and courts its favor, offering to sell her charms to philosophy. it is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel's is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all.”

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Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)