Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 13

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The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.

Soren Kierkegaard

Martyr

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Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Soren Kierkegaard

Childhood, Kind, Scene

"On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, 1841.

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It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

Soren Kierkegaard

Understanding, Trouble, Paradox

"Journals". Book by Søren Kierkegaard, Harper (1847), 1959.

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Night, Echoes, Silence

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Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.

Soren Kierkegaard

Grief, Knowledge, Men

Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.

Soren Kierkegaard

Taken, Portraits, Daguerreotypes

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Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

Soren Kierkegaard

Observers, Earnestness

The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, (Pap VI B 120:13), 1845.

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Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Soren Kierkegaard

Birthday, Ideas, Age

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The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

Soren Kierkegaard

Feelings, Mediocrity, Lovers

Soren Kierkegaard (2017). “Philosophical Fragments”, p.24, Jovian Press

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...a human being not only can choose but... he must choose... for in this way God retains His honor while at the same time has a fatherly concern for humankind. Though God has lowered Himself to being that which can be chosen, yet each person must on his part choose. God is not mocked. Therefore the matter stands thus: If a person avoids choosing, this is the same as the presumption of choosing the world.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Honor, World

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You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?

Soren Kierkegaard

Art, What If, Guessing

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...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

Soren Kierkegaard

Hands, Personality, Might

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Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death.

Soren Kierkegaard

Profound, Together, Different

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You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow, one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool. But you are a long way from marriage.

Soren Kierkegaard

Girl, Children, Pride

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Fighting, Pride, Men

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Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that
love too has its prophecies in the individual.

Soren Kierkegaard

Believe, Long Ago, Remembrance

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In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

Soren Kierkegaard

Melancholy

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But doubt is wily and cunning and never, as it is sometimes said to be, loud or defiant. It is unassuming and sly, not bold or assertive - and the more unassuming, the more dangerous.

Soren Kierkegaard

Doubt, Sometimes, Loud

Soren Kierkegaard, George Pattison (2010). “Spiritual Writings: A New Translation and Selection”, p.13, Harper Collins

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As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him.

Soren Kierkegaard

Archer, Men, Hands

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A man's personality is matured only when he appropriates the truth, whether it is spoken by Balaam's ass or a sniggering wag or an apostle or an angel.

Soren Kierkegaard

Angel, Men, Personality

"Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829-1848". Book by Søren Kierkegaard and Gregor Malantschuk, p. 226, Journals IV A 87 (1843), 1978.

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To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Nature, Heart

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This is the miracle of life: that each person who heeds him or herself knows what no scientist can ever know: who he or she is.

Soren Kierkegaard

Self, Miracle, Scientist

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I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away - yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.

Soren Kierkegaard

Party, Long, Soul

Soren Kierkegaard's journal entry, March 1836.

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Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heart, Focus, Purity

Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. ... My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known - no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Soren Kierkegaard

Love, Depression, Depressing

"Either/Or" by Soren Kierkegaard, ‎Howard Vincent Hong, ‎Edna Hatlestad Hong, Princeton University Press, Vol. 1, 1987.

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Soren Kierkegaard

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Born: May 5, 1813
Died: November 11, 1855
Occupation: Philosopher
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