Skip to content

If the child sees its mother distressed, it never thinks of tracing the distress back to God as the cause, or that there might be an ambiguity of distress and accordingly that the distress might come from God for the very purpose of drawing the person to God. The child, however, immediately thinks of evil people.

— Søren Kierkegaard Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844)

Another quote →

More quotes by Søren Kierkegaard

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.

All Søren Kierkegaard quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Søren Kierkegaard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.