Søren Kierkegaard citations

Page 3

“Venez, sommeil et mort; vous ne promettez rien, vous tenez tout.”

“La foi est justement ce paradoxe : l'individu, en tant qu'individu, est plus grand que le général, il est justifié devant le général, il ne lui est point subordonné, mais lui est supérieur, et il l'est de telle manière, observez-le bien, que c'est l'individu qui, après avoir été subordonné en tant qu'individu au général, devient, à travers le général, l'individu dont l'individualité est supérieure au général, parce que l'individu, en tant qu'individu, est en rapport absolu avec l'absolu. Cette position ne souffre aucune médiation, puisque toute médiation survient justement en vertu du général.”

“Le feu prit un jour dans les coulisses d'un théâtre. Le bouffon vint en avertir le public. On crut à un mot plaisant et l'on applaudit; il répéta, les applaudissements redoublèrent. C'est ainsi, je pense, que le monde périra dans l’allégresse générale des gens spirituels persuadés qu’il s’agit d’une plaisanterie.”

“Que la vie est insignifiante et vide!”

“L'angoisse est le vertige de la liberté.”

“La jouissance proprement dite ne réside pas dans la chose dont on jouit, mais dans l’idée qu’on s’en fait.”

“Quant à l'autorité humaine, étant fétichiste, j'adore n'importe qui avec une égale ferveur, pourvu qu'avec assez de tambour on annonce que c'est un tel qu'il faut que j'adore, et que cette année c'est lui l'autorité et l'imprimatur. Le choix passe toujours ma raison, qu'on le tire au sort ou qu'on vote, ou que la dignité alterne par roulement, et que son détenteur siège alors comme un membre de municipalité au conseil des prud'hommes.”

“Les hommes sont vraiment absurdes. Ils n'usent jamais des libertés dont ils jouissent, mais ils réclament celles qu'ils n'ont pas; ils ont la liberté de pensée, ils demandent la liberté de parole.”

“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.”

“Where is the boundary for the single individual in his concrete existence between what is lack of will and what is lack of ability; what is indolence and earthly selfishness and what is the limitation of finitude?”

“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.”

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”

“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.”

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”

“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”

“It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.”

“Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”