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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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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
Choose
Willing
Common
Another
Form
Choosing
Deepest
Despair
Oneself

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Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
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Purity of heart is to will one thing.
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Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief, but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief that sustains thought and holds the world together.
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All moral elevation consists first and foremost of being weaned from the momentary.
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Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.
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Choose to be who you are. . . The individual who would become a person must at some point take over his entire being - must, that is, choose herself.
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At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
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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.
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Spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited.
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Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
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This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.
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The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
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A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.
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You wanted God's ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Backwards understood be only can but, forwards lived be must life.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Be that self which one truly is.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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.
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What labels me, negates me.
Soren Kierkegaard
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People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
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I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.
Soren Kierkegaard