Soren Kierkegaard

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

The highest good is not to be understood as an abstract, but as a concrete, as a personality.

What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is.

Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don't hang yourself, you'll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.

Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way.

To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

I do not call myself a Christian.

What a dreadful falsehood it is to admire the truth, instead of following it.

All existence makes me anxious, from the smallest fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation; the whole thing is inexplicable, I most of all; to me all existence is infected, I most of all. My distress is enormous, boundless; no one knows it except God in heaven, and he will not console me...

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.

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.

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.

Woman is weak — no, she is humble, she is much closer to God than man is. Hence it is that love is everything to her, and she will certainly not disdain the blessing and confirmation which God is ready to bestow upon her .... Man is proud, he would be everything, would have nothing above him.

The most common deception is when a person deceives himself; the next most common is when he deceives others; the least common is when he deceives himself into believing that he is deceiving others.

What the philosophers say about reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads 'Pressing Done Here.' If you were to take your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled, for the sign is merely for sale.

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.

To be a Christian is not to be a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but to be a Christian.

People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.