Soren Kierkegaard
For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.Collection: God Love
What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?Collection: Men
Busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impossible for an individual to form a heart.Collection: Christian
It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.Collection: Life
With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.Collection: Men
The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to this increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair. This is everywhere apparent, most clearly in despair at its maximum and minimum. The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance. . . .Collection: Despair
I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.Collection: Night
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.Collection: Hero
Faith is the highest passion in a man.Collection: Passion
Faith is holding onto uncertainties with passionate conviction.Collection: Faith
Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.Collection: Friendship
The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality.Collection: Fighting
Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.Collection: Eye
Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored.Collection: Mean
Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!Collection: Deceiving
A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all we've got, be it little or much. Every person can do that.Collection: Christian
Hope is a passion for the possible.Collection: Passion
Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence.Collection: Truth
How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that God exists unless one has already allowed Himself to ignore Him? A king's existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king's existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God's existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker's pious bungling.Collection: Christian
to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.Collection: Winning
Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.Collection: Past
. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.Collection: Truth
There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.Collection: Life
Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able.Collection: Evil
...the greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally - weaknesses, fears, and all. For God loves obedience more than good intentions or second-best offerings, which are all too often made under the guise of weakness.Collection: Christian
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!Collection: Life
It is impossible to exist without passionCollection: Passion
Men who not religious or artists are fools.Collection: Religious
Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself to the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire the truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to the truth there is an abridgement, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity for struggling for it.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Believe
Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.Collection: Heart
...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.Collection: Christian
We live as if we were unaware of our impending destructionCollection: Destruction
The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.Collection: Christian
In the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd. He only sees each individualCollection: Eye
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.Collection: Judging
It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.Collection: Important
God does not think; he creates. He does not exist; he is eternal.Collection: Fear
Future is everything that past has forgotten.Collection: Past
The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.Collection: Despair
The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone.Collection: Believe
If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.Collection: Men
Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God.Collection: Prayer
The commandment is that you shall love, but when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for; without this life you really do not live.Collection: Love
Comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make.Collection: Dangerous
A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.Collection: Deception
The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.Collection: Limits
That is the road we all have to take - over the Bridge of Sight into eternity.Collection: Journey