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Genius never desires what does not exist.

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
Desires
Exist
Genius
Desire
Doe
Never

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.
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Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
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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.
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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.
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Language has time as its element all other media have space as their element.
Soren Kierkegaard
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When you open the door which you shut in order to pray to God, the first person you meet as you go out is your neighbour whom you shall love. Wonderful!
Soren Kierkegaard
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Doubt is thought's despair despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat - as is the case with the better artists.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
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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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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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Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.
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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Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
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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Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us.
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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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