KIERKEGAARDIAN PSYCHOLOGY

This is the by now customary selection of my favorite Kierkegaardian maxims. The title suggests that much of Kierkegaardian wisdom is psychological in nature. So far, I haven’t included my comments to the quotes below, but in the future I intend to do so.

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

“At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.”

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”

“Once you label me, you negate me.”

“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are formed so that as sighs and cries pass over them, they sound like beautiful music.”

“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, but demand those they have not. They want freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they refuse to use.”

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you will never have.”

“A fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that is just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it is a joke.”

“Boredom is the root of all evil --- the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.”

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...”

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and I walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one can’t walk away from it. But by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”

“If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.”

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.”

“Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

“It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not.”

“There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.”