Soren Kierkegaard Quotes - Page 16

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It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Soren Kierkegaard

Men, Opposites, Imperfection

The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1841.

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It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it?

Soren Kierkegaard

Real, Intelligent, Two

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Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.

Soren Kierkegaard

Time, Genius, Want

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And then the spirit brings hope, hope in the strictest Christian sense, hope which is hoping against hope. For an immediate hope exists in every person; it may be more powerfully alive in one person than in another; but in death every hope of this kind dies and turns into hopelessness. Into this night of hopelessness (it is death that we are describing) comes the life-giving spirit and brings hope, the hope of eternity. It is against hope, for there was no longer any hope for that merely natural hope; this hope is therefore a hope contrary to hope.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Hope, Night

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An individual in despair despairs over something. . . . In despairing over something, he really despair[s] over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper. . . . To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself-this is the formula for all despair.

Soren Kierkegaard

Individuality, Despair, Want

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What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heart, Men, People

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It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God's Word ('Give all your goods to the poor.' 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left.' 'If anyone takes your coat, let him have your cloak also. Rejoice always.' 'Count it sheer joy when you meet various temptations' etc.). The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God's requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Giving, Joy

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Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Adventure, Men, Anxiety

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As I stood alone and forsaken, and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my own nothingness, and on the other hand, the sure flight of the birds recalled the words spoken by Christ: Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father: then, all at once, I felt how great and how small I was; then did those two mighty forces, pride and humility, happily unite in friendship.

Soren Kierkegaard

Father, Fall, Humility

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He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it-he is and remains a bungler

Soren Kierkegaard

Girl, Sight, Doe

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In actuality, no one ever sank so deep that he could not sink deeper, and there may be one or many who sank deeper. So it is always possible to be happy and grateful that things are not worse!

Soren Kierkegaard

Gratitude, Grateful, May

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Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . .

Soren Kierkegaard

Ignorance, Negativity, Individuality

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If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

Soren Kierkegaard

Passion, Dark, Men

Soren Kierkegaard (2005). “Fear and Trembling”, p.18, Penguin UK

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It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heart, Trying, Identity

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Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do

Soren Kierkegaard

Ironic, Rejuvenation, Irony

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The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

Soren Kierkegaard

Life, Passion, Soul

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Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

Soren Kierkegaard

Yield, Discipline, Consistency

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

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It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.

Soren Kierkegaard

Distance, Greatness, Yesterday

"Fear and Trembling". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, translation by S. Walsh, p. 28, 2006.

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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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Memories, Divine Justice, Paper

"Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Against Cowardliness". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 351,

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It will be easy for us the first time we receive that ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many there are who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?

Soren Kierkegaard

Yarn, Labyrinth, Mazes

"Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829-1848". Book by Søren Kierkegaard and Gregor Malantschuk, p. 36, Journal entry (August 1, 1835), 1978.

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It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten. On the contrary, it is loss and perdition. But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt.

Soren Kierkegaard

Heart, Loss, Winning

Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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Sleeping is the height of genius

Soren Kierkegaard

Sleep, Genius, Height

Soren Kierkegaard (2004). “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life”, p.42, Penguin UK

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My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.

Soren Kierkegaard

Daughter, Fall, Mean

Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.

Soren Kierkegaard

Time, Despair, Separation

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...knowing God is the condition for the sanctification of a human being by God's assistance and according to His intention. Wherever God is, there He is always creating... He wants to create a new human being. To need God is to become new. And to know God is the crucial thing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Creating, Knowing

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Soren Kierkegaard

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Born: May 5, 1813
Died: November 11, 1855
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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