Soren Kierkegaard

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. 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's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy – to be someone who is brisk about their food and work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.

What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act...

The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do.

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.

A young girl is excused for not being able to give reasons, they say she lives in her feelings. It is different with me. Generally, I have so many and usually mutually contradictory reasons that, for that reason, it is impossible for me to give reasons.

The tragic and the comic are the same, insofar as both are contradiction; but the tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical the painless contradiction.

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

An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed... That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion.

The most tremendous energy of which the world is capable is the spiritual energy of a man who is in despair.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

The more a person is able to laugh, the more profound is his spirit.

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.

The greatest good to be achieved by a human being is to become a true self.

Don't forget to love yourself.

In order to win a man to a particular truth, it is necessary to find him where he is and to begin there.

The good is the only thing that can be done for its own sake.

Truth is subjectivity.

The present age is essentially the age of understanding, of reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and then shrewdly relapsing into repose.