Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

But Abraham believed, therefore he was young; for he who always hopes for the best becomes old, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old early, but he who believes preserves an eternal youth.

By comparison with a passionate age, an age without passion gains in scope what is loses in intensity .

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance.

Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

If the sphere of paradox-religion is abolished, or explained away in aesthetics, an Apostle becomes neither more nor less than a genius, and then--good night, Christianity! Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and originality, a call from God and genius, all end by meaning more or less the same thing.

But now how can an Apostle prove that he has authority? If he could prove it physically , then he would not be an Apostle. He has no other proof than his own statement. That has to be so; for otherwise the believer's relationship to him would be direct instead of being paradoxical.

What good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not?

If anything is to be done, one must try to introduce Christianity into Christendom.

Most Christians have at some point faced the question, "Which church should I attend?" After reading Attack Upon Christendom the question becomes, "Is it OK for a Christian to go to church?

It is terrifying when God takes out the instruments for the surgery for which no human being has the strength: to take away a person's human zest for life, to slay him — in order that he can live as one who has died to the world and to the flesh.

Although in this life one may find solace in the crowd from God's radical demands, "In eternity you will look in vain for the crowd. You will listen in vain to find where the noise and the gathering is, so that you can run to it." In actual fact, "For the Infinite One, there is no place, the individual is himself the place.

If a pastor's activity in the church is merely a once-a-week attempt to tow the congregation's cargo ship a little closer to eternity, the whole thing comes to nothing. A human life, unlike a cargo ship, cannot lie in the same place until the next Sunday.