Søren Kierkegaard

To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.

—Søren Kierkegaard

I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.

—Søren Kierkegaard

Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.

—Søren Kierkegaard

It’s better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion.

—Søren Kierkegaard

My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.

—Søren Kierkegaard

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.

—Søren Kierkegaard

To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self.. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.

—Søren Kierkegaard

Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.

—Søren Kierkegaard

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

—Søren Kierkegaard

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

—Søren Kierkegaard

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

—Søren Kierkegaard

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

—Søren Kierkegaard

People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.

—Søren Kierkegaard

The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.

—Søren Kierkegaard

I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.

—Søren Kierkegaard

Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle–what joy, then, would you have in it?

—Søren Kierkegaard

In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

—Søren Kierkegaard

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.

—Søren Kierkegaard

On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart.

—Søren Kierkegaard

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

—Søren Kierkegaard

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

—Søren Kierkegaard