Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

Cuando un hombre habla como un libro impreso, es aburrido escucharle, pero a menudo es muy útil hablar de este modo.

repentance and remorse. The one calls us forward.

What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die

porque es grande renunciar al propio deseo, pero aún es más grande seguir en lo temporal, cuando ya se ha renunciado a ello.

If a human being did not have an eternal consciousness, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting power that writhing in dark passions produced everything, be it significant or insignificant, if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?

A intra ca un vis în gândurile unei fete e o art?,a reuÅŸi s?-i ieÅŸi din gând e o capodoper?

Riches and abundance come hypocritically clad in sheep's clothing, pretending to be security against anxieties, and they become then the object of anxiety. They secure a man against anxieties just about as well as the wolf that is put to tending the sheep.

Surrounded by hordes of people, busy with all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world – such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too risky to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, part of the crowd.

Mine': what does this word mean? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to, what contains my whole being, which is mine only so far as I belong to it. My God is not the God that belongs to me, but the God to whom I belong; and so, too, when I say my native land, my home, my calling, my longing, my hope. If there had been no immortality before, this thought that I am yours would be a breach of the normal course of nature." —Johannes the Seducer, from_Either/Or_

Whenever the individual after he has entered the universal feels an impulse to assert himself as the particular, he is in temptation (Anfechtung), and he can labor himself out of this only by abandoning himself as the particular in the universal.

metaphysics, the mood becomes that of dialectical uniformity and disinterestedness, which ponder sin as something that cannot withstand the scrutiny of thought. The concept of sin is also altered, for sin is indeed to be overcome, yet

I sacrifice myself for my profession, my wife, my children, or, more properly expressed, I do not sacrifice myself for them, but I find in them my satisfaction and joy.

Is it such a self-deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself?

A Panegyric upon Abraham

To be a man, to live here in this world, is to be put on trial

Tap for all del ikke lysten til å gå: jeg går meg til det daglige velbefinnende hver dag og går fra enhver sykdom; jeg har gått meg til mine beste tanker og jeg kjenner ingen tanke så tung at man ikke kan gå fra den.

those who possess faith should take care to set up certain criteria so that one might distinguish the paradox from a temptation (Anfechtung).

What is it to be God's elect ? It is to be denied in youth the wishes of youth, so as with great pains to get them fulfilled in old age.

To go beyond Hegel is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for my part have devoted a good deal of time to the understanding of the Hegelian philosophy, I believe also that I understand it tolerably well, but when in spite of the trouble I have taken there are certain passages I cannot understand, I am foolhardy enough to think that he himself has not been quite clear. All

Why then did Abraham do it ? For God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God's sake because God required this proof of his faith ; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof.

Kierkegaard lo niega: placer físico y reflexión no pueden convivir).

By my own strength I am able to give up the princess, and I shall not become a grumbler, but shall find joy and repose in my pain ; but by my own strength I am not able to get her again, for I am employing all my strength to be resigned. But by faith, says that marvellous knight, by faith I shall get her in virtue of the absurd.

For when faith is eliminated by becoming null or nothing, then there only remains the crude fact that Abraham wanted to murder Isaac – which is easy enough for anyone to imitate who has not faith, the faith, that is to say, which makes it hard for him. 1

In the New Testament Christ calls the Apostles and the disciples witnesses, requires them to witness to Him. Let us see now what is to be understood by this. These are men who by the renunciation of all things, in poverty, in lowliness, and thus ready for every suffering, were to go out into the world which expresses mortal hostility to the Christian way of life. This is what Christ calls witnesses and witnessing.