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If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

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
Precisely
God
Capable
Cannot
Must
Believe
Objectively
Grasping

More quotes by 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.
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As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.
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The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impossible for an individual to form a heart.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.
Soren Kierkegaard
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In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Worship isn't God's show. God is the audience. God's watching. The congregation, they are the actors in this drama. Worship is their show. And the minister is just reminding the people of their forgotten lines.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a Christian (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
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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The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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During the first period of our lives the greatest danger is not to take the risk. When once the risk has been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking at first one turns aside and serves trivialities in the second case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic and perhaps to presumption.
Soren Kierkegaard
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At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Soren Kierkegaard
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Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?
Soren Kierkegaard
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The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods... Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake... He does it for the sake of God because God demands proof of his faith... He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
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God is present in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen. Therefore, each person must choose. Terrible is the battle, in a person's innermost being, between God and the world. The crowning risk involved lies in the possession of choice.
Soren Kierkegaard