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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
I begin with the principle that all men are bores.
Surely no one will prove himself
so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil,
no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads.
This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world.
The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
- Soren Kierkegaard
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To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Face the facts of being what you are,
for that is what changes what you are.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The self-assured believer is a greater sinner
in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever
- Soren Kierkegaard
Prayer doesn't change God, but changes him who prays
- Soren Kierkegaard
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
- 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
Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- 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
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
Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard
People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- 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
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste
that they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Once you label me, you negate me.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
- Soren Kierkegaard
At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
- 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
Pleasure disappoints, possibility never
- 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
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- 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
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
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
Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks,
that we concentrate only
on what is most significant and important.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Be that self which one truly is.
- 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
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
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
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
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
When you read God's Word, you must
constantly be saying to yourself,
"It is talking to me, and about me."
- 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
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
- 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
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
- W. C. Fields
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living;
the world owes you nothing; it was here first.
- Mark Twain
Nothing is more cheerful than talking
about our friends' shortcomings.
- Mason Cooley
Nothing echoes like an empty mailbox.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
- Mark Twain
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious
as to have friends at a distance;
they make the latitudes and the longitudes.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter
quite like unrequited love.
- Charlie Brown in Charles M. Schulz' Peanuts comic
There's nothing wrong with being afraid.
We were meant to be afraid.
- the Woody Allen movie Anything Else
I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothing.
- the movie The Rescuers Down Under
Gossip is the art of saying nothing
in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
- Walter Winchell
I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed.
- George Carlin
Always forgive your enemies -
nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde
Nothing is as good for the soul as a marshmallow roast.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say,
abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
- George Eliot
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
The man who reads nothing at all
is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do;
the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
- Mary Wilson Little
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
- Albert Schweitzer
Today is probably a good day for something;
but it's a better day for doing nothing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design,
no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller
Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?"
Then a voice answers "Nothing personal,
your name just happened to come up. -
- Charlie Brown, in Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
The third certainty of life, after death and taxes,
is that nothing will work out the way you want.
Life is fully as bad as you think it is.
Choose to live joyfully anyway.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
- John Lennon
I think that there is nothing, not even crime,
more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself
than this incessant business.
- Henry David Thoreau
The Christian missionary may preach the gospel
to the poor naked heathen,
but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe
have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
- Carl Jung
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.