What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
Soren KierkegaardPain reconciles one to existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt in the old fable. The thread is spun with tears, bleached by tears, the shirt sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself.
Soren KierkegaardThose who dream must be awakened, and the deeper the people are who slumber, or the deeper they slumber, the more important it is that they be awakened, and the more powerfully must they be awakened.
Soren KierkegaardYou train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?
Soren KierkegaardThe resolving of the ethical, is freedom; the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.
Soren Kierkegaard