Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

vivir así, alegre y feliz, instante tras instante, siempre en virtud del absurdo; ver constantemente pender la espada sobre la cabeza de la persona amada, y sin embargo no encontrar reposo en el dolor de la resignación sino gozo en virtud del absurdo. Quien es capaz de obrar así es grande de verdad, un hombre sin par (…)

But one thing I will not do; no, not for anything in the world: I will not, though it were merely with the last quarter of the last joint of my little finger, I will not take part in what is known as official Christianity, which by suppression and by artifice gives the impression of being the Christianity of the New Testament; and upon my knees I thank my God that He has compassionately prevented me from becoming too far embroiled in it.

Por qué nos encontramos a veces con individuos que se avergüenzan de confesar que poseen la fe? Me parece inaudito.

he who will not pass through this curriculum is helped very little by the fact that he was born in the most enlightened age.

To strive against the whole world is a comfort, to strive with oneself is dreadful.

Mil gracias merece el que encontrándose con uno a quien han asaltado las tribulaciones de esta vida hasta dejarlo desnudo, le ofrece con la fuerza de sus palabras con qué cubrir su miseria.

In the constant sociability of our age people shudder at solitude to such a degree that they know no other use to put it to but (oh, admirable epigram!) as a punishment for criminals. But after all it is a fact that in our age it is a crime to have spirit, so it is natural that such people, the lovers of solitude, are included in the same class with criminals.

Just as a dog which is compelled to walk on two feet has every instant a tendency to go again on all four, and does so as soon as it sees its chance, waiting only to see its chance, so is Christendom an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity, claiming that it is Christianity perfected.

joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all, even their lives... proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating...absorbed in themselves and in working towards their higher goal.

The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

Thereby thought is led on to something which also is characteristic of official Christianity, the unmanliness of using cunning, untruth and lies as its power. That again is very characteristic of official Christianity, which, being itself an untruth, uses a prodigious amount of untruth, both to hide what truth is, and to hide the fact that it is untruth.

man who lives under his own supervision, alone in the whole world

the Christianity of Christendom, takes this into account; it takes away from Christianity the offense, the paradox, etc., and instead of that introduces, probability, the plainly comprehensible. That is, it transforms Christianity into something entirely different from what it is in the New Testament, yea, into exactly the opposite; and this is the Christianity of Christendom, of us men.

Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief - in all eternity, that I cannot do. But one thing I can do: I can compel him to become aware.

Even if the words were terrible, even though it were a Shakespeare, a Byron, or a Shelley who broke the silence,20 the word always retains its redeeming power, because all despair and all the horror of evil expressed in one word are not as awful as silence.

What Christendom needs at every moment is someone who expresses Christianity uncalculatingly or with absolute recklessness.

If he is not supposed to be that, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs on this path, the more dreadful a hypocrite he is.

when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.

There was one who was great in his strength, and one who was great in his wisdom, and one who was great in hope, and one who was great in love;

But still he must have recourse to the paradox. For when the individual by his guilt has gone outside the universal he can return to it only by virtue of having come as the individual into an absolute relationship with the absolute.

Skal man hjelpe en annen, må man først finne ut hvor han er, og møte ham der. Dette er det første bud i all sann hjelpekunst.

loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all.

No me gustan las jóvenes que se consideran interesantes, pues sólo se llega a serlo tras un estudio de uno mismo, igual que en lo interesante se exhibe siempre la persona del artista. Una señora que pretenda gustar por ser interesante, ha de comenzar por agradarse a sí misma. Esto no es bonito: constituye una de las desventajas que la estética puede reprochar a la coquetería

So the merman cannot belong to Agnes unless, after having made the infinite movement, the movement of repentance, he makes still one more movement by virtue of the absurd.