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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
Once you label me, you negate me.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Be that self which one truly is.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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Pleasure disappoints, possibility never
- Soren Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Prayer doesn't change God, but changes him who prays
- Soren Kierkegaard
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The tyrant dies and his rule is over,
the martyr dies and his rule begins
- Soren Kierkegaard
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- 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
Face the facts of being what you are,
for that is what changes what you are.
- Soren Kierkegaard
At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
- Soren Kierkegaard
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- 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
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
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
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
People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks,
that we concentrate only
on what is most significant and important.
- 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
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
The minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion.
- 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
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
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
If I am capable of grasping God objectively,
I do not believe, but precisely because
I cannot do this I must believe.
- Soren Kierkegaard
During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- 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
Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- 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
The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- 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
The self-assured believer is a greater sinner
in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever
- Soren Kierkegaard
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.
- Billy Sunday
Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln
Habits age men before their time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Men are what their mothers made them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not pray for easy lives.
Pray to be stronger men.
- John F. Kennedy
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
- Henry David Thoreau
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
How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu
Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Instead of comparing our lot with that
of those who are more fortunate than we are,
we should compare it with the lot
of the great majority of our fellow men.
It then appears that we are among the privileged.
- Helen Keller
Who never walks save where he sees
men's tracks, makes no discoveries.
- J. G. Holland
My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.
- Robert E. Lee
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help.
- Albert Schweitzer
I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is gentleness;
the second is frugality;
the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others.
Be gentle and you can be bold;
be frugal and you can be generous;
avoid putting yourself before others
and you can become a leader among men.
- Lao Tzu
Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view which they take of them.
- Epictetus
Men are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
Truth is the property of no individual
but is the treasure of all men.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not work that kills men; it is worry.
Worry is rust upon the blade.
- Henry Ward Beecher
Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it,
while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill.
The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation
is the same as in the life of the individual.
Pessimism kills the instinct that
urges men to struggle against poverty,
ignorance and crime, and dries up
all the fountains of joy in the world.
- Helen Keller
There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese proverb
There are times, sir, when men of good conscience
cannot blindly follow orders.
- Captain Picard, STAR TREK: The Next Generation
The reason why men do not obey us,
is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day
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Thank you, Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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