Søren Kierkegaard citations

Page 4

“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.”

“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.”

“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.”

“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….”

“Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.”

“The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.”

“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.”

“Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic — if it is pulled out I shall die.”

“The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about.”