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It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

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
Solitude
Epigram
Modern
Epigrams
Age
Frightful
Use
Satire
Make
Sentence
Jail
Sentences
Punishment

More quotes by 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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Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
Soren Kierkegaard
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What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
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.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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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To Dare is to risk losing your foothold for a moment, Not to Dare is to risk losing yourself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.
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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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
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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.
Soren Kierkegaard
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One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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In order to help another effectively, I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him... instruction begins when you put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking him.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Genius never desires what does not exist.
Soren Kierkegaard