Quotes By Soren Kierkegaard

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.

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.

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

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.

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.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

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

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.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

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

Don't forget to love yourself.

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

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.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

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.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

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.

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

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Be that self which one truly is.

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

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

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