The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.
Soren Kierkegaard
- More quotations by Philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard quotes
Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
Don't forget to love yourself.
During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.
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.
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
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.
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
Once you label me you negate me.
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, "It is talking to me, and about me."
Similiar authors
Arthur Schopenhauer
E. M. Cioran
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Sissela Bok
Pierre Teilhard de Chardi
Pierre Teilhard de Chardi
Baruch Benedict de Spinoz
Baruch Benedict de Spinoz
Alan W. Watts
William Whewell