Soren Kierkegaard

A person who speaks like a book is exceedingly boring to listen to; sometimes, however, it is not inappropriate to talk in that way. For a book has the remarkable property that it can be interpreted any way you wish. If one talks like a book one__ conversation acquires this property too. I kept quite soberly to the usual formulas. She was surprised, as I__ expected; that can__ be denied. To describe to myself how she looked is difficult. She seemed multifaceted; yes just about like the still to be published but announced commentary to my book, a commentary capable of any interpretation. One word and she would have laughed at me; another and she would have been moved; still another and she would have shunned me; but no such word came to my lips. I remained solemnly unemotional and kept to the ritual._ __he had known me for such a short time_, dear God, it__ only on the strait path of engagement one meets such difficulties, not the primrose path of love.___rom_Either/Or: A Fragment of Life_. Abridged, Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Alastair Hannay, p. 312

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Once you label me you negate me.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

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

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

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.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

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.