Soren Kierkegaard quotes

“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

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

— Soren Kierkegaard

“It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

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

— Soren Kierkegaard

“I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Purity of heart is to will one thing.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“One can advise comfortably from a safe port.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“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

“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

“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

“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.”

— Soren Kierkegaard