Top 350 Soren Kierkegaard Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

52. “People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

53. “Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

54. “It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

55. “The Bible is God’s love letter to us.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

56. “The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

57. “This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

58. “If you think you understand, it isn’t God.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

59. “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.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

60. “I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

61. “The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

62. “A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

63. “If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

64. “I believe that there is a longing in my soul that searches the whole world.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

65. “I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

66. “Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

67. “Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than “The Individual.””

— Soren Kierkegaard

68. “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”

— Soren Kierkegaard

69. “It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

70. “When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me”.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

71. “No time of life is so beautiful as the early days of love, when with every meeting, every glance, one fetches something new home to rejoice over.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

72. “You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?”

— Soren Kierkegaard

73. “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

74. “Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

75. “In order to swim one takes off all one’s clothes – in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one’s inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc., before one is sufficiently naked.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

76. “What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

77. “As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

78. “A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

79. “In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

80. “On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

81. “Seek first God’s Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent – then shall the rest be added unto you.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

82. “To pace about, looking to obtain status, looking to attain ‘importance’ – I can think of nothing more ridiculous.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

83. “You become what you understand.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

84. “Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, who so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

85. “It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

86. “In the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd. He only sees each individual.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

87. “I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

88. “Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

89. “It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

90. “I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

91. “People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

92. “Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

93. “What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

94. “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.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

95. “Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

96. “A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

97. “Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

98. “It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won’t be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

99. “I must find a truth that is true for me.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

100. “It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.”

— Soren Kierkegaard