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All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

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
Essential
Essentials
Relationship
Existence
Knowledge
Relates
Relate

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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The resolving of the ethical, is freedom the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God
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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With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
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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If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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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Where unclarity resides, there is temptation, and there it proves only too easily the stronger. Wherever there is ambiguity, wherever there is wavering, there is disobedience down at the bottom.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith - when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith - this [is] subjectivity ... at its height.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.
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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The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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.
Soren Kierkegaard