"The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it."
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Soren Kierkegaard quotes (page 11 of 25)
496 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"When you say 'Yes' or promise something, you can very easily deceive yourself and others also, as if you had already done what you promised. It is easy to think that by making a promise you have at least done part of what you promised to do, as if the promise itself were something of value. Not at all! In fact, when you do not do what you promise, it is a long way back to the truth."
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"Whoever has the world's treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of the spirit it is otherwise."
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"All moral elevation consists first and foremost of being weaned from the momentary."
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"...the person who surrenders absolutely to God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe. From this safe hiding-place he can see the devil , but the devil cannot see him."
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"The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious."
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"Without risk, faith is an impossibility."
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"On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart"
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"God is present in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen. Therefore, each person must choose. Terrible is the battle, in a person's innermost being, between God and the world. The crowning risk involved lies in the possession of choice."
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"Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it."
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"Out of love, God becomes man. He says: 'See, here is what it is to be a human being'."
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"Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do"
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"Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing."
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"Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death."
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"Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe"
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"The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God."
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"Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth."
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"Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor."
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"Faith is the highest passion in a man."
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"It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not."
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