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Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste
that they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Related topics: Wisdom Psychology Philosophy Simple Simplicity Urgency
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Be that self which one truly is.
- Soren Kierkegaard
During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard
People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Prayer doesn't change God, but changes him who prays
- Soren Kierkegaard
If I am capable of grasping God objectively,
I do not believe, but precisely because
I cannot do this I must believe.
- 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.
- 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.
- Soren Kierkegaard
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The more a man can forget, the greater the number
of metamorphoses which his life can undergo,
the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Once you label me, you negate me.
- Soren Kierkegaard
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks,
that we concentrate only
on what is most significant and important.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Pleasure disappoints, possibility never
- Soren Kierkegaard
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
- Soren Kierkegaard
People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have,
for example, freedom of thought;
instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
- Soren Kierkegaard
At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The tyrant dies and his rule is over,
the martyr dies and his rule begins
- Soren Kierkegaard
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Face the facts of being what you are,
for that is what changes what you are.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director? I want to see him.
- Soren Kierkegaard
I begin with the principle that all men are bores.
Surely no one will prove himself
so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The self-assured believer is a greater sinner
in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever
- Soren Kierkegaard
If I were to wish for anything,
I should not wish for wealth and power,
but for the passionate sense of potential -
for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.
Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being
and walk away from every illness.
I have walked myself into my best thoughts,
and I know of no thought so burdensome
that one cannot walk away from it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
When you read God's Word, you must
constantly be saying to yourself,
"It is talking to me, and about me."
- Soren Kierkegaard
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say.
Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful:
he makes saints out of sinners.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him,
for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low,
could still be saved; the bitterest enemy
and also he who was your friend could again be your friend;
love that has grown cold can kindle
- Soren Kierkegaard
Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour
when every one has to throw off his mask?
Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?
Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight
in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it?
I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others
that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;...
In every man there is something which to a certain degree
prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself;
and this may be the case in so high a degree,
he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life
which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself.
But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love,
and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.
- Soren Kierkegaard
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil,
no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads.
This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world.
The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
- 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
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 difference between men friends and women friends
is that men tend to do things together,
women tend to just be together.
- Art Jahnke
Men kick friendship around like a football,
but it doesn't seem to crack.
Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
- Henry David Thoreau
Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day
Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men
is primarily based on mutual trust
and only secondarily on institutions
such as courts of justice and police.
- Albert Einstein
My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.
- Robert E. Lee
I look only to the good qualities of men.
Not being faultless myself,
I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
It is not work that kills men; it is worry.
Worry is rust upon the blade.
- Henry Ward Beecher
Men are what their mothers made them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The revelation of thought takes men
out of servitude into freedom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women want mediocre men,
and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.
- Margaret Mead
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau
When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
Love men and women not for their strength
but their softness,
not for their fullness but their hunger,
not for their plenty but their need.
- Anais Nin
(paraphrase)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery
as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man.
All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are,
the more they are frightened.
- George S. Patton
Little do men perceive what solitude is,
and how far it extendeth.
For a crowd is not company,
and faces are but a gallery of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal,
where there is no love.
- Francis Bacon
It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer
in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same
amount of energy loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
- Helen Keller
A man likes his wife to be
just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness,
and just stupid enough to admire it.
- Israel Zangwill
Men of lofty genius,
when they are doing the least work,
are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Women must try to do things as men have tried.
When they fail their failure must be
but a challenge to others.
- Amelia Earhart
Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller
When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison
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Jonathan Lockwood Huie
"The Philosopher of Happiness" - is the author of 100 Secrets for Living a Life You Love, co-author of Simply An Inspired Life, speaker, personal coach, and creator of the popular Daily Inspiration - Daily Quote free email.>
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