Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Attributed to Kierkegaard in a number of books, the earliest located on Google Books being the 1976 book Jack Kerouac: Prophet of the New Romanticism by Robert A. Hipkiss, p. 83. In the 1948 The Hibbert Journal: Volumes 46-47 the quote is referred to as "the famous Kierkegaardian slogan" on p. 237, which may be intended to suggest the phrase is Kierkegaard-esque rather than being something written by Kierkegaard, while in the 1949 The Ampleforth Journal the quote is now described on p. 5 as "Kierkegaard's famous slogan". In reality this seems to be a slightly altered version of the quote "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced" which appeared in the 1928 book The Conquest of Illusion by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw, p. 9. An earlier analogue less similar in wording can be found in the 1922 book The General Problems of Psychology by Robert Mac Dougall, who writes on p. 160 that "Religion does not offer a truth to be proved, but a reality to be exp