TheEldritchFox > TheEldritchFox's Quotes

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread".”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
― Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either - Or

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“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.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I stick my finger into existence and it smells of nothing.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...”
― Søren Kierkegaard