Quote

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.

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
Every
Despair
Induce
Would
Oneself
Nourished
Men
Confidence
Ranks
Follow
Ingenious
Courage
Eliminate
Living
Compassionate
Fattened
Doe
Surrender
Counsels
Self
Requires
Yielded

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.
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A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to the general applause of wits who believe it's a joke.
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Without risk, faith is an impossibility.
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If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
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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.
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The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.
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It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten. On the contrary, it is loss and perdition. But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt.
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Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
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Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.
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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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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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Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!
Soren Kierkegaard
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The thing that cowardice fears most is decision
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Dread is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.
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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The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The door to happiness opens outward.
Soren Kierkegaard
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No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?
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To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.
Soren Kierkegaard
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When you open the door which you shut in order to pray to God, the first person you meet as you go out is your neighbour whom you shall love. Wonderful!
Soren Kierkegaard