The genius differs from us men in being able to endure isolation, his rank as a genius is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we men are constantly in need of “the others,” the herd; we die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the herd, of the same opinion as the herd.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed.

— Soren Kierkegaard

There is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety in the face of an unknown something.

— Soren Kierkegaard

This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is dread.

— Soren Kierkegaard

It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!

— Soren Kierkegaard

All lives end, but not all conclude.

— Soren Kierkegaard

It is not what happens to me that makes me great, but what I do.

— Soren Kierkegaard

If man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in anxiety. Since he is both beast and angel, he can be in anxiety, and the greater the anxiety, the greater the man.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Anxiety can just as well express itself by muteness as by a scream.

— Soren Kierkegaard

One must see it close up, the callousness with which otherwise kind people act in the capacity of the public because their participation or non-participation seems to them a trifle – a trifle that with the contributions of the many becomes the monster.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action... The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented – and then do nothing.

— Soren Kierkegaard

One must see how no attack is so feared as that of laughter... because more than any other this attack isolates the one attacked.

— Soren Kierkegaard

The lyrical author is only concerned with his production, enjoys the pleasure of producing, often perhaps only after pain and effort; but he has nothing to do with others, he does not write in order that: in order to enlighten men or in order to help them along the right road, in order to bring about something; in short he does not write in order that.

— Soren Kierkegaard

There are two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Another translation says:”There are two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn’t so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Woman is the conscience of man.

— Soren Kierkegaard

It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it.

— Soren Kierkegaard

The great can never do harm when grasped in their greatness.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always present, is always true. Only the Eternal applies to each human being, whatever his age may be.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Deepest within every person there is nonetheless an anxiety about being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household.

— Soren Kierkegaard

I am a fork, and I will stick you!

— Soren Kierkegaard
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