“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”
Faith
“Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.”
TruthAll Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.”
Patience“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”
Death“The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.”
Great“Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.”
Teacher“Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.”
Love“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.”
God“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.”
Freedom“Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.”
Great“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”
God“Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.”
Change“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.”
Music“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Freedom“A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”
Happiness“People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.”
Travel“Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.”
God“Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.”
Life“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
Freedom“I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.”
Great“Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.”
Time