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It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it?

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
Intelligent
Possible
Asks
Two
Done
Real
Unintelligent
Neighbor
Questions

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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Hope is a passion for the possible.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
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May new sufferings torment your soul.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Do it or don't do it - you will regret both.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
Soren Kierkegaard
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I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away - yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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There can be no faith without risk.
Soren Kierkegaard
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But doubt is wily and cunning and never, as it is sometimes said to be, loud or defiant. It is unassuming and sly, not bold or assertive - and the more unassuming, the more dangerous.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The resolving of the ethical, is freedom the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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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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Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to the general applause of wits who believe it's a joke.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods... Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake... He does it for the sake of God because God demands proof of his faith... He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die - but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.
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
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To venture causes anxiety. Not to venture is to lose oneself.
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.
Soren Kierkegaard