Soren Kierkegaard

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

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.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

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

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Once you label me you negate me.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

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

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

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

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.