Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards. Soren Kierkegaard More Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard More Quotes From Soren Kierkegaard What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. Soren Kierkegaard musicheartbeautiful Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Soren Kierkegaard unconditionallovegiving 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. Soren Kierkegaard fightingmentwo A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it. Soren Kierkegaard hintspossibilityvision ...it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it. Soren Kierkegaard gainschristianorder People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don't know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines. Soren Kierkegaard wingspeopleideas Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. Soren Kierkegaard awarenessdonechristianity It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand. Soren Kierkegaard dutyunderstandinghumans To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity. Soren Kierkegaard heartbreaklovecheating Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. Soren Kierkegaard strugglemendeath Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask... Soren Kierkegaard hoursmidnight There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. Soren Kierkegaard getting-highcouragemen And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. Soren Kierkegaard definitionssinopposites 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. Soren Kierkegaard rootsevilmean ... the more one needs God the more perfect he is. To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself. It is the saddest thing in the world if a human being goes through life without discovering that he needs God! Soren Kierkegaard christianperfectneeds Be that self which one truly is. Soren Kierkegaard individualityselfknowledge 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. Soren Kierkegaard emergencieskissingtruth The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it. Soren Kierkegaard goddoeideas And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not. Soren Kierkegaard despairnoiserunning Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see Soren Kierkegaard truthlovethinking
