Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 12

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• 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.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Too Much, Equal, Interest

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• The person who praises God is on the tracks of justice.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Track, Justice, Thought Provoking

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• It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Wisdom, Philosopher

  Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru, 1938).

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• Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Roots, Bores You, Evil

  "Either/Or" by Soren Kierkegaard, ‎Howard Vincent Hong, ‎Edna Hatlestad Hong, Princeton University Press, Vol. 1, (p. 286), 2013.

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• If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Hero, Judging, World

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• When you say 'Yes' or promise something, you can very easily deceive yourself and others also, as if you had already done what you promised. It is easy to think that by making a promise you have at least done part of what you promised to do, as if the promise itself were something of value. Not at all! In fact, when you do not do what you promise, it is a long way back to the truth.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Thinking, Long

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• And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Running, Despair, Noise

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• 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.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Father, Ideas, Heaven

  "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 37, 1843.

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• Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Distance, Taken, Thinking

  "Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 1". Book by Søren Kierkegaard, Indiana University Press, Journals VII 1A 363, p. 40, 1967.

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• In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved...He would die with nothing to reproach himself with, and under the impression that if only he had had the money he might really have lived and might even have achieved something great.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Beautiful, Girl, Art

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

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Smell, Sticks, Fingers

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• Busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impossible for an individual to form a heart.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Heart, Hustle

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• With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Men, Order, Perfect

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• I believe that there is a longing in my soul that searches the whole world.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Believe, Soul, World

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• Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Suicide, Suicidal, Long

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• What the philosophers have to say about reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes in to be pressed, you would be fooled: for the sign is only for sale.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Reality, Clothes, Would Be

  Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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• Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Men, Personality, Made

  Soren Kierkegaard (2015). “The Prayers of Kierkegaard”, p.134, University of Chicago Press

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• Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Reality, Repetition

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• The most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Despair, Common, Form

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• How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Mean, Men, Dumb

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• 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.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Drinking, Order, Lust

  "Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 83, 1845.

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• To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking him.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Thanking Him, Legs, Knees

  "Journals". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, Harper (1841), 1959.

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• I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Long, Doe, Lovers

  Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  God Love, Persons

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• Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Long, Mind, Different

  "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, 1844.

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