Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. For instance, the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar; perhaps in turn it can forget that it was a butterfly so completely that it can become a fish. The

seems to me that Christian dogmatics must be an explication of Christ's activity, the more so since Christ established no teaching but was active. He didn't teach that there was a redemption for man, he redeemed men. A Muhammadan dogmatics (sit venia verbo)21 would be an explication of Muhammad's teaching, but a Christian dogmatics is an explication of Christ's activity.

Think of a sinner who is sinking in the abyss; listen to his cry of anguish when with his last groan he vindicates the justice his life has mocked and says: It is self-inflicted

let us speak of the wish and thereby of the sufferings; let us properly linger over this, convinced that one may learn more profoundly and more reliably what the highest is by considering suffering than by observing achievements, where so much that is distracting is present.

People do say that now to know oneself is a deception and an imperfection, but often they are unwilling to understand that someone who actually knows himself perceives precisely that he is not capable of anything at all

If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.

From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.

However, a self, every instant it exists, is in process of becoming, for the self [potentially] does not actually exist, it is only that which it is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self; but not to be one's own self is despair.

If a man in truth wills the Good then he must be willing to suffer all for the Good.

People say the good Lord fills the stomach before the eyes. I haven't noticed; my eyes have had enough and I am weary of everything, and yet I hunger.

For my part I can in a way understand Abraham, but at the same time I apprehend that I have not the courage to speak, and still less to act as he did — but by this I do not by any means intend to say that what he did was insignificant, for on the contrary it is the one only marvel.

The way of objective reflection turns the individual into something accidental, and thus turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something.