Soren kierkegaard Inspirational Quotes

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.

People generally think that it is the world, the environment, external relationships, which stand in one's way, in the way of ones' good fortune... and at bottom it is always man himself that stands in his own way.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.

It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.

Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it - and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you - for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.

To love another person is to help them love God.

Christ has not only spoken to us by his life but has also spoken for us by his death.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

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.

I'm so misunderstood that people misunderstand me even when I tell them I'm misunderstood.

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.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.

The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

The question is not "To be or not to be," it is what we should be until we are not.

A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.

Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect.

Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.

The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

God creates everything out of nothing. And everything which God is to use, he first reduces to nothing

Genius never desires what does not exist.

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.

The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

In order to help another effectively, I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him... instruction begins when you put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it.

It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.

The truly simple way of presenting Christianity is to do it.

Future is everything that past has forgotten.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

Hope is passion for what is possible.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Be that self which one truly is.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

If you think you understand, it isn't God.

The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.

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.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.

It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won't be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.

As my prayer became more attentive and inward, I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent... This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.

We live as if we were unaware of our impending destruction

The Bible is God's love letter to us

The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.

Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?

... 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!

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.

It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.

Confidence is the present tense of hope.

To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.

Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask...

In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.

No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.

It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.

My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.

Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to itself.

You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.

Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air.

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.

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

God does not think; he creates. He does not exist; he is eternal.

The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

...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.

A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.

Don't forget to love yourself.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

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.

The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.

Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

Teach me, 0 God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.

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.

The wisdom of the years is confusing. Only the wisdom of eternity is edifying.

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

The best news the World has ever heard came from a graveyard - Christ is risen!

Everyone looks the same to me in a photograph: stupid.

What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.

Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God.

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

...Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity ... is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men's lives.

The thing that cowardice fears most is decision

A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.

Comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make.

The door to happiness opens outward.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Do it or don't do it - you will regret both.

People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.

Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?

A road well begun is the battle half won. The important thing is to make a beginning and get under way.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

I must find a truth that is true for me.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.