Quote

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

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
Christian
Choose
Possession
Moments
Terrible
Chosen
Order
Involved
Battle
Persons
Risk
Lies
Person
Present
Therefore
Must
Choices
Choice
Crowning
World
Lying
Watches
Innermost
Moment
Watch
Orthodox

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

Image
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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
Image
On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The thing that cowardice fears most is decision
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper?
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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
Image
Where there are two people, there is untruth.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a Christian (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility
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