209 quotes
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go.
The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Either/Or (1843)
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.
But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, ‘Be’, lovingly adjoins, ‘Be something even in apposition to me.’
Christian Discourses (1848)
Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other.
The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Either/Or (1843)
I have never fought in such a way as to say: I am the true Christian, others are not Christians.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me.
The Sickness unto Death (1849)
I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.
The Point of View of My Work as an Author (1848)
The Sophist demonstrates that everything is true and nothing is true.
On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)
Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular.
Fate is a relation to spirit as external.
The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic.
What we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world.
The Sickness unto Death (1849)
The world is rejuvenated, but as Heine so wittily remarked, it was rejuvenated by romanticism to such a degree that it became a baby again.
On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)
Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.
The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard as translated by Alexander Dru (1959)
Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it.