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Adversity
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Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Age
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Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Belief
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It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Boredom
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Boredom is the root of all evil--the despairing refusal to be oneself.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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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
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Bravery
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It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Community
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When you open the door which you shut in order to pray to God, the first person you meet as you go out is your neighbour whom you shall love. Wonderful!
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Concentration
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It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Control
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At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people to fight: clever, vigorous, crafty fellows. Later I realized that it was good that I did not become one, for most police cases involve misery and wretchedness -- not crimes and scandals.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Conversation
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How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Death
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Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Depression
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In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Desires
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It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Discontent
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I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Discovery
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The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Enjoyment
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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
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Faith
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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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Fear
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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
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Fight, Fighting
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The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Freedom
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People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Ideas
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Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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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 wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Identity
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Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Once you label me you negate me.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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Books by and about Soren Kierkegaard