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Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

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
Cannot
Must
Earnestness
Observer
Observers
Precisely
Consists
Explain
Death

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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To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.
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Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing.
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...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
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Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do
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A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.
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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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Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It is a very curious thing about superstition. One would expect that the man who had once seen his morbid dreams were not fulfilled would abandon them for the future but on the contrary they grow even stronger just as the love of gambling increases in a man who has once lost in a lottery.
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The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Do it or don't do it - you will regret both.
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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To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard
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What labels me, negates me.
Soren Kierkegaard
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My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it.
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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The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
Soren Kierkegaard
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When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper?
Soren Kierkegaard