Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself."

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

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.

There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do

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.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

Spiritual superiority only sees the individual. But alas, ordinarily we human beings are sensual and, therefore, as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes - we see something abstract, the crowd, and we become different. But in the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd, He only sees each individual.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

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

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.

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.