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Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

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Soren Kierkegaard
Age: 42 †
Born: 1813
Born: January 1
Died: 1855
Died: January 1
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
København
Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Victor Eremita
Climacus
Anti-Climacus
Sören Aaby Kierkegaard
Life
Wisdom
Positivity
Understanding
Backwards
Forwards
Age
Funeral
Danish
Spiritual
Aging
Eulogy
History
Reflection
Adages
Experience
Lived
Memorial
Must
Understood
Theologian
Love
Positive
Reflecting

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
Soren Kierkegaard
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...the reason for [this age's] anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, 'truth' increases in scope and quantity - via science and technology - while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all we've got, be it little or much. Every person can do that.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?
Soren Kierkegaard
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My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.
Soren Kierkegaard
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In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There can be no faith without risk.
Soren Kierkegaard
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To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard
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...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Choose to be who you are. . . The individual who would become a person must at some point take over his entire being - must, that is, choose herself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world?
Soren Kierkegaard
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In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The commandment is that you shall love, but when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for without this life you really do not live.
Soren Kierkegaard