The Diary Of Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Diary Of Soren Kierkegaard

“The majority of men in every generation, even those who, as it is described, devote themselves to thinking, live and die under the impression that life is simply a matter of understanding more and more, and that if it were granted to them to live longer, that life would continue to be one long continuous growth in understanding. How many of them ever experience the maturity of discovering that there comes a critical moment where everything is reversed, after which the point becomes to understand more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“The Highest, after all, is not to comprehend the Highest, but to do it.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“The most dangerous situation for a child in regard to matters of religion:
The most dangerous is not that the father or the educator is a freethinker, or even a hypocrite. No, the most dangerous is if he is a pious, God-fearing man, and the child is intimately and deeply sure of it, but nevertheless senses that deep down in his father’s soul there is a hidden disquiet, as though fear of God and piety still were powerless to give peace. The real danger lies in the fact that on this point the child is almost compelled to draw a conclusion about God, namely that, after all, God is not infinitely loving.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Diary Of Soren Kierkegaard

“„Het is beslist waar, zoals de filosofen zeggen, dat het leven naar achteren moet worden begrepen. Maar ze vergeten de andere kwestie, dat het leven naar voren moet worden geleefd.”

Origineel in het Deens:
“Det er ganske sandt, hvad Philosophien siger, at Livet maa forstaaes baglaends. Men derover glemmer man den anden Saetning, at det maa leves forlaends.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard