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

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
Opposites
Passing
Desire
Human
Imperfection
Everything
Attain
Humans
Belongs
Men
Passings
Opposite

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart
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Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent - then shall the rest be added unto you.
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At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
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Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.
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In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes--in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc., before one is sufficiently naked.
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I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole.
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Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.
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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.
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Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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What the philosophers have to say about reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes in to be pressed, you would be fooled: for the sign is only for sale.
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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Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air.
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The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.
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How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
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The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Soren Kierkegaard