In actuality, no one ever sank so deep that he could not sink deeper, and there may be one or many who sank deeper. So it is always possible to be happy and grateful that things are not worse! Soren Kierkegaard More Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard More Quotes From Soren Kierkegaard Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able. Soren Kierkegaard possibility able evil Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety. Soren Kierkegaard anxiety fate ...it is presumptuous ridicule of God if someone thinks that only the person who desires great wealth chooses mammon. Alas, the person who insists on having a penny without God, wants to have a penny all for himself. He thereby chooses mammon. A penny is enough, the choice is made, he has chosen mammon; that it is little makes not the slightest difference. The love of God is hatred of the world and love of the world hatred of God. Soren Kierkegaard world-and-love christian thinking It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten. On the contrary, it is loss and perdition. But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt. Soren Kierkegaard winning loss heart Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning. Soren Kierkegaard christian morning believe But the life of freedom requires a beginning, and here a beginning is a resolution, and the resolution has its work and its pain-thus the beginning has its difficulty. Soren Kierkegaard resolution difficulty pain The meaning lies in the appropriation. Soren Kierkegaard appropriation lying As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him. Soren Kierkegaard archer men hands If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? Soren Kierkegaard passion dark men What I really need is to get clear out about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge precedes every act. Soren Kierkegaard clear knows needs I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men. Soren Kierkegaard misunderstood poet men 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. Soren Kierkegaard be-who-you-are individual persons One is not unpopular because he uses peculiar expressions; that just so happens; such terms become a fad, and by and by everybody, down to the last simpleton, uses them. But a person who follows through an idea in his mind is, and always will be, essentially unpopular. That is why Socrates was unpopular, though he did not use any special terms, for to grasp and hold his 'ignorance' requires greater vital effort than understanding the whole of Hegel's philosophy. Soren Kierkegaard ignorance expression philosophy 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. Soren Kierkegaard divinity silence understanding Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, who so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility. Soren Kierkegaard possibility pleasure wine For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal. Soren Kierkegaard egypt fields men The great trick with a woman is to get rid of her while she think's she's rid of you. Soren Kierkegaard tricks women thinking Doubt is thought's despair; despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought. Soren Kierkegaard soul personality expression I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity. Soren Kierkegaard stupid clever philosophy Now, with God's help, I shall become myself. Soren Kierkegaard religious helping religion
