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Søren Kierkegaard 1813-1855 
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The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think. (Philosophical Fragments) . . . the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. (The Sickness unto Death) 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 ¾ an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. ¾ is sure to be noticed. (The Sickness unto Death) In relation to their systems most systematisers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings. (The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard) What the philosophers say about Reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window which reads: Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled; for only the sign is for sale. (Either/Or) The method which begins by doubting in order to philosophise is just as suited to its purpose as making a soldier lie down in a heap in order to teach him to stand up straight. (The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard) Experience, it is said, makes a man wise. That is very silly talk. If there were nothing beyond experience it would simply drive him mad. (The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard) It’s quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards. A principle which, the more one thinks it through, precisely leads to the conclusion that life in time can never properly be understood, just because no moment can acquire the complete stillness needed to orient oneself backwards. (Søren Kierkegaard’s Papirer) The situation of the guilty person travelling through life to eternity is like that of the murderer who fled the scene of his act ¾ and his crime ¾ on the express train: alas, just beneath the coach in which he sat ran the telegraph wires carrying his description and orders for his arrest at the first station. (The Sickness unto Death) APHORISMS IN DUTCH INDEX MAIN PAGE |
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