Soren Kierkegaard

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

The aesthetic is the immediate, the ethical is the choice, the religious is the infinite passion of inwardness.

The true humorist does not want to be a humorist, but an earnest man.

I see it all, I understand it all, I grasp it all, but I do not want to obey.

The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self.

Despair is the sickness unto death, this tormenting contradiction, this sickness in the self; it is to be eternally dying, to die and yet not die, to die the death.

The present age is an age of dissolution, an age of disintegration, an age of destruction.

The task is to understand myself, to understand what I am to do, to see what God really wants me to do.

The objective truth is not for me, for I am a subject, and as a subject I must exist.

Comparison is the end of happiness and the beginning of dissatisfaction.

The greatest misfortune of all is that people are not willing to live in the present, but are always looking forward to the future.

The only thing I am afraid of is that I shall not remain a humorist.

My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known.

That which is called 'the world' is nothing but a lot of people, each of whom has lost his self through a process of reflection upon the self, a process which has become so habitual that it has become a second nature.

To be a Christian is the most terrible of all things, if one really means it.

The highest of all is not to understand the highest, but to act upon it.

What the world needs is a good dose of despair.

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it. Laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; don’t believe her, you will also regret it. Believe a woman or don’t believe her, you will regret both. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it. Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: Create silence! Bring men to silence!