Søren Kierkegaard
Quotes from Søren Kierkegaard
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
"People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me."
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."
"The most common form of despair is not being who you are."
"It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards."
"The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed."
"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."
"What labels me, negates me."
"The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have."
"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love."
"What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful."
"Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see."
"What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?"
"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself."
"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!"
"Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."
"If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin."
"To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity."
"The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God."
"Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it."
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived."
"It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey."
"Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself."