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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
Despair
Oneself
Choose
Willing
Common
Another
Form
Choosing
Deepest

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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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
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For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!
Soren Kierkegaard
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The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a Christian (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It is not the path which is the difficulty rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.
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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The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.
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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No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Reflection is not the evil but a reflective condition and the deadlock which it involves, by transforming the capacity for action into a means of escape from action, is both corrupt and dangerous, and leads in the end to a retrograde movement.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith - when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith - this [is] subjectivity ... at its height.
Soren Kierkegaard
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This age will die not as a result of some evil, but from a lack of passion.
Soren Kierkegaard
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...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Pleasure disappoints possibility never.
Soren Kierkegaard