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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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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
Important
Dies
Thing
Idea
Understand
True
Truth
Ideas
Find
Live
Recognize

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality.
Soren Kierkegaard
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If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
Soren Kierkegaard
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...the greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally - weaknesses, fears, and all. For God loves obedience more than good intentions or second-best offerings, which are all too often made under the guise of weakness.
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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Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief, but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief that sustains thought and holds the world together.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.
Soren Kierkegaard
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May new sufferings torment your soul.
Soren Kierkegaard
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No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.
Soren Kierkegaard
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... all comparisons injure.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The person who praises God is on the tracks of justice.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The truth is lived before it is understood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way... Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
Soren Kierkegaard