Top 380 Soren Kierkegaard Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

352. “I have never fought in such a way as to say: I am the true Christian, others are not Christians.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

353. “There are men who are wanting in the comparative, they as a rule are the most interesting.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

354. “To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

355. “There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

356. “The girl made an impression on me, and I forgot her; the other made no impression, and her I can remember.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

357. “I have attacked no one as not being a Christian, I have condemned no one.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

358. “Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

359. “Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes; and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

360. “Men are not on such intimate terms with the sublime that they really can believe in it.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

361. “He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it-he is and remains a bungler.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

362. “Woman is the conscience of man.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

363. “It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!”

— Soren Kierkegaard

364. “One must see it close up, the callousness with which otherwise kind people act in the capacity of the public because their participation or non-participation seems to them a trifle – a trifle that with the contributions of the many becomes the monster.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

365. “Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action... The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented – and then do nothing.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

366. “There is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety in the face of an unknown something.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

367. “This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is dread.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

368. “Anxiety can just as well express itself by muteness as by a scream.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

369. “One must see how no attack is so feared as that of laughter... because more than any other this attack isolates the one attacked.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

370. “Passion excites, earthly wisdom cools, but neither this heat nor this coolness, nor the blending of the heat and coolness is the pure air of the eternal. There is in this heat something ardent, and in this coolness something sharp, and in the blending of the two something indefinite, or an unconscious deceitfulness, as in the hazardous season of spring. But this ‘thou shalt love’ takes away all the unsoundness and preserves the soundness of eternity.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

371. “That in which all human life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

372. “All lives end, but not all conclude.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

373. “The lyrical author is only concerned with his production, enjoys the pleasure of producing, often perhaps only after pain and effort; but he has nothing to do with others, he does not write in order that: in order to enlighten men or in order to help them along the right road, in order to bring about something; in short he does not write in order that.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

374. “The actor’s art is the art of deceiving; the art is the deception. To be able to deceive is the great thing, and to allow oneself to be deceived is just as great. Therefore one must not be able and must not want to see the actor through the costume; therefore it is the pinnacle of art when the actor becomes one with what he represents, because this is the pinnacle of deception.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

375. “Forsake the dissimilarities so that you can love the neighbor. Alas, perhaps it is not even necessary to say this to you; perhaps you found no beloved in this world, no friend along the way, so that you are walking alone.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

376. “Spontaneous love makes a person free and at the next moment dependent. It is just as with a person’s coming into existence; by coming into existence, by becoming a self, he becomes free, but at the next moment he is dependent on this self.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

377. “The poet can understand everything, in riddles, and wonderfully explain everything, in riddles, but he cannot understand himself or understand that he himself is a riddle.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

378. “When the depressed person desires to be rid of life, indeed, of himself, is this not because he is unwilling to learn earnestly and rigorously to love himself?”

— Soren Kierkegaard

379. “The best defense against hypocrisy is love; indeed, it is not only a defense but a chasmic abyss; in all eternity it has nothing to do with hypocrisy. This also is a fruit by which love is known – it secures the loving one against falling into the snare of the hypocrite.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

380. “However ridiculous, however backward, however inexpedient loving one’s neighbour may seem in he world, it is still the highest a man is capable of doing.”

— Soren Kierkegaard