“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
“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”
FaithAll Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
“The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.”
Truth“Don't forget to love yourself.”
Love“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.”
Marriage“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”
Men“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“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“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“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.”
Good“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“Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.”
Life“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”
Faith“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.”
Life“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”
Experience“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“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“Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.”
Change“Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.”
Great“Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.”
Love“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