Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.

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 ... what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!

Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.

Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term.

Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to itself.

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

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: 'See, here is what it is to be a human being'.

Faith is the highest passion in a man.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.

Only one human being recognized as one's neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

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.

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

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

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

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

Once you label me you negate me.

Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.

What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.

The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.

Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.