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Søren Kierkegaard Quotes
1813–1855 Denmark
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, considered to be a founder of Existentialist thought and Absurdist traditions. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables.
Denmark Novelists Philosophers Poets Theologians Also known as: Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, Søren, Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, Soren kierkegaard
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209 quotes
I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?
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.
Journals IV A 87 (1843)
Love has its priests in the poets, and one hears at times a poet's voice which worthily extols it.
Fear and Trembling (1843)
None has more contempt for what it is to be a man than they who make it their profession to lead the crowd.
It is at the touch of love that she first awakens; before that she is dream.
Either/Or (1843)
Make Christianity your own, and it will show you a point outside the world, and by means of this you will move heaven and earth.
Works of Love (1847)
The woman is substance, the man is reflection.
Either/Or (1843)
The expectancy of an eternal salvation will reconcile everyone with his neighbor, with his friend, and with his enemy in an understanding of the essential.
Irony is the birth-pangs of the objective mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by the I, between existence [Existentsen] and the idea of existence.
What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act.
One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).
Let us suppose that a man believes in eternal life on Christ's word. In that case he believes without any fuss about being profound and searching and philosophical and racking his brains.
Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849)
To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.
All Christian knowing, however rigorous its form, ought to be concerned, but this concern is precisely the upbuilding.
The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
One understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands.
It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.
Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.
Works of Love (1847)
Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent — then shall the rest be added unto you.
The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air (1849)
It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
What a dangerous objection it would be against Christianity, therefore, if paganism had a definition of sin which Christianity had to acknowledge was correct.
The Sickness unto Death (1849)
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