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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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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
Clothes
Etc
Thoughts
Aspire
Takes
Inward
Sense
Selfishness
Order
Conception
Undress
Truth
Swim
Divest
Must
Naked
Conceptions
Oneself
Sufficiently

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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Worship isn't God's show. God is the audience. God's watching. The congregation, they are the actors in this drama. Worship is their show. And the minister is just reminding the people of their forgotten lines.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.
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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.
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Language has time as its element all other media have space as their element.
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Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Soren Kierkegaard
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For the sadness in legitimate humour consists in the fact that honestly and without deceit it reflects in a purely human way upon what it is to be a child.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impossible for an individual to form a heart.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it.
Soren Kierkegaard
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To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party.
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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What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.
Soren Kierkegaard
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To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.
Soren Kierkegaard