Quote

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

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
Personality
Completely
Expression
Doubt
Spheres
Sides
Motion
Thought
Belong
Soul
Total
Different
Despair

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

Image
Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
...the person who surrenders absolutely to God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe. From this safe hiding-place he can see the devil , but the devil cannot see him.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.
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 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
Image
Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness I have walked myself into my best thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
The God that can be named is not God.
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
Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
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.
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
The Bible is God's love letter to us
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Just as in the great moment of resignation one does not mediate but chooses, now the task is to gain proficiency in repeating the impassioned choice and, existing, to express it in existence.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
A poet is not an apostle he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Without risk, faith is an impossibility.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
Maturity consists in the discovery that there comes a critical moment where everything is reversed, after which the point becomes to understand more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.
Soren Kierkegaard
Image
It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten. On the contrary, it is loss and perdition. But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt.
Soren Kierkegaard