Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Matter
Dies
Existentialism
Need
Knowledge
Wills
Must
Purpose
Crucial
Needs
Idea
Matters
Thing
Truth
Except
Every
Ideas
Willing
Really
Find
Shall
Precede
Live
Clear
Insofar

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

Image
O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Dread is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The door to happiness opens outward.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
May new sufferings torment your soul.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
People generally think that it is the world, the environment, external relationships, which stand in one's way, in the way of ones' good fortune... and at bottom it is always man himself that stands in his own way.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The thing that cowardice fears most is decision
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
But doubt is wily and cunning and never, as it is sometimes said to be, loud or defiant. It is unassuming and sly, not bold or assertive - and the more unassuming, the more dangerous.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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
Image
It doesn't occur to me at this moment to say more another time, perhaps tomorrow, I may have more to say, but always the same thing and about the same, for only gypsies, robber gangs and swindlers follow the adage that where a person has once been he is never to go again.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The absurd . . . the fact that with God all things are possible. The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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
Image
Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.
Soren Kierkegaard