Soren Kierkegaard

“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.”

“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”

“Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.”

“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.”

“Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.”

“Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.”

“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.”

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.”

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

“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.”

“A person who speaks like a book is exceedingly boring to listen to; sometimes, however, it is not inappropriate to talk in that way. For a book has the remarkable property that it can be interpreted any way you wish. If one talks like a book one’s conversation acquires this property too. I kept quite soberly to the usual formulas. She was surprised, as I’d expected; that can’t be denied. To describe to myself how she looked is difficult. She seemed multifaceted; yes just about like the still to be published but announced commentary to my book, a commentary capable of any interpretation. One word and she would have laughed at me; another and she would have been moved; still another and she would have shunned me; but no such word came to my lips. I remained solemnly unemotional and kept to the ritual.― ‘She had known me for such a short time’, dear God, it’s only on the strait path of engagement one meets such difficulties, not the primrose path of love.”―from_Either/Or: A Fragment of Life_. Abridged, Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Alastair Hannay, p. 312”

“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.”

“Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.”

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

“Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.”

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

“Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.”