Frases de Søren Kierkegaard

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“La gente me entiende tan poco que ni siquiera entiende mi queja de que no me entienden.”

“Por encima de todo, no olvides el deber de amarte a ti mismo.”

“La forma más común de desesperación es no ser quien eres.”

“La gente exige libertad de expresión como compensación a la libertad de pensamiento, que rara vez utilizan.”

“El estado más doloroso del ser es recordar el futuro, particularmente aquel que nunca tendrás.”

“La vida no es un problema que tiene que ser resuelto, sino una realidad que debe ser experimentada.”

“la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás; aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante”

“Así­ como el animal en cautividad recorre a diario la jaula para desentumecer sus patas o mide la longitud de su cadena, así mido yo la longitud de la mía, remontándome hasta la muerte, para desentumecer mis miembros, y hacer más llevadera la vida.”

“Una mujer es un ser débil; cuando se ha dado enteramente, lo ha perdido todo: si la inocencia es algo negativo en el hombre, en la mujer es la esencia de la vida.”

“Vivir en el recuerdo es el más perfecto modo de vida que se puede imaginar.”

“La fe es la pasión por lo posible y la esperanza es el acompañante inseparable de la fe.”

“La fe […] comienza con los movimientos del infinito, y sólo más tarde pasa a los de lo infinito.”

“la fe […] es lo más grande que se pueda poseer; por eso al filosofía comete un fraude cuando nos ofrece otra cosa a cambio y habla despectivamente de la fe. La filosofía no puede ni debe darnos la fe, sino que debe comprenderse a sí misma, saber lo que está en grado de ofrecer, no ocultar nada y mucho menos birlarnos una cosa determinada, considerándola una nadería”

“El caballero de la fe está solo en todo momento.”

“La oración no cambia a Dios, pero sí cambia a quien ora.”

“La angustia es el vértigo de la libertad.”

“Si te casas lo lamentarás. Si no te casas, también lo lamentarás.”

“Dejemos con toda libertad a los sabios el privilegio de no contradecirse nunca.”

“En mí he encontrado a la persona más interesante entre mis conocidos.”

“La angustia, sin embargo, no es hermosa por sí misma, sino solamente cuando aparece acompañada por la energía que sabe dominarla.”

“Y la esperanza va ensanchando por momentos su ciclo sobre mí, y una imagen, su imagen, pasa vagamente por el éter, como la luna, a veces cegándome de luz ya veces cegándome de sombras.”

“Debo encontrar una verdad que sea verdad para mí.”

“Lo que me importa es entender el propio sentido y definición de mi ser, ver lo que Dios quiere verdaderamente de mí.”

“La pureza del corazón consiste en desear una cosa.”

“No puedo evitar sonreírme cuando pienso la habilidad con la que sé pronunciar su nombre, ese nombre, en un momento decisivo.”

“En todo gozo es condición indispensable saberse dominar.”

“Que otros se lamenten de que los tiempos son malos; yo me quejo de su mediocridad, puesto que ya no se tienen pasiones.

… Por eso mi alma se vuelve siempre al Viejo Testamento y a Shakespeare. Aquí se siente en todo caso la impresión de que son hombres los que hablan, aquí se odia y se ama de veras, se mata al enemigo, y se maldice a su descendencia por todas las generaciones; aquí se peca.”

“¡Qué irónico es que precisamente por medio del lenguaje un hombre pueda degradarse por debajo de lo que no tiene lenguaje!”

“La hora del dolor puede volvernos altivos, si es que no nos quiebra: en ella, nada se ha quebrado…”

“Hay dos maneras de ser engañado. Una es creer lo que no es verdad; la otra es negarse a creer lo que es verdad.”

“Una vez que me etiquetas, me niegas.”

“Lo hagas o no, te arrepentirás.”

“Los recuerdos, con el tiempo, se vuelven un precioso tema de conversación y en su alma causará más efecto aquello que conmovió tan profundamente su sentir.”

“El tirano muere y su reino termina; el mártir muere y su reino comienza.”

“Dejemos con toda tranquilidad a la gente sabia el orgullo de no caer nunca en contradicción.”

“Y ahora, un poco de paciencia, sin apremios: me la han destinado y algún día me pertenecerá.”

“Privarse a uno mismo del amor es la decepción más terrible; es una pérdida eterna para la que no hay reparación, ni en el tiempo ni en la eternidad.”

“¿Quién tiene la culpa sino ella y el tercer factor, de donde nadie sabe,lo cual me movió con su estímulo y me transformó?”

“That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty – no, he chose poverty.”

“When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.
In "Christendom" the situation is a different one. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, and the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be disposed of.”

“The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.””

“If God stops a man on the road, and calls him with a revelation and sends him armed with divine authority among men, they say to him; from whom dost thou come? He answers: from God. But now God cannot help his messenger physically like a king, who gives him soldiers or policemen, or his ring or his signature, which is known to all; in short, God cannot help men by providing them with physical certainty that an Apostle is an Apostle-which would, moreover, be nonsense. Even miracles, if the Apostle has that gift, give no physical certainty; for the miracle is the object of faith.”

“Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle, like the Jews; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.”

“Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of modern philosophy, every Privatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and ill-timed to ask them where they are going.”

“However well-meaning and strong the individual man may be (if he could only use his strength), he still has not the passion to be able to tear himself from the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection. Nor do his surroundings supply the events or produce the general enthusiasm necessary in order to free him. Instead of coming to his help, his milieu forms around him a negative intellectual opposition, which juggles for a moment with a deceptive prospect, only to deceive him in the end by pointing to a brilliant way out of the difficulty-by showing him that the shrewdest thing of all is to do nothing.”

“What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity, and how have they confused Christianity? Quite briefly and categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into the sphere of aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in brings Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.”

“Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being."”

“You wanted God’s ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father.”

“Alas, time comes and time goes, it subtracts little by little; then it deprives a person of a good, the loss of which he indeed feels, and his pain is great. Alas, and he does not discover that long ago it has already taken away from him the most important thing of all-the capacity to make a resolution-and it has made him so familiar with this condition that there is no consternation over it, the last thing that could help gain new power for renewed resolution!”

“If someone were to expound that godliness is to belong to childhood in the temporal sense and thus dwindle and die with the years as childhood does, is to be a happy frame of mind that cannot be preserved but only recollected; if someone were to expound that repentance as a weakness of old age accompanies the decline of one’s powers, when the senses are dulled, when sleep no longer strengthens but increases lethargy-this would be ungodliness and foolishness.”

“People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals?”

“What if the equality between us human being, in which we completely resemble one another, were that none of us really thinks about his being loved? Preface P. 166”

“In the Church which was founded at Corinth, St. Paul had special difficulties of the kind I have mentioned. In that flourishing commercial city, which through its shipping and situation, maintained a vital connexion between East and West, numerous crowds of people flocked together from all quarters, different in speech and in culture. As they mingled with the inhabitants, they produced, by contacts and contrasts, new and ever new differences. Even in the Church this differentiation endeavoured to make itself felt in sects and parties; and a kind of pagan wisdom made a special attempt to force itself forward as a teacher of truth. In his first letter to this church, from which the text I read is taken, St. Paul strongly combats this tendency.”

“He fixed his definition thus: reflection is the possibility of the relation, consciousness is the relation, the first form of which is contradiction. He soon noted that, as a result, the categories of reflection are always dichotomous. For example ideality and reality, soul and body, to recognize – the true, to will – the good, to love – the beautiful, God and the world, and so on, these are categories of reflection. In reflection, these touch each other in such a way that a relation becomes possible. The categories of consciousness, on the other hand, are trichotomous, as language itself indicates, for when I say I am conscious of this, I mention a trinity. Consciousness is mind and spirit, and the remarkable thing is that when in the world of mind or spirit one is divided, it always becomes three and never two. Consciousness, therefore, presupposes reflection. If this were not true it would be impossible to explain doubt. True, language seems to contest this, since in most languages, as far as he knew, the word ‘doubt’ is etymologically related to the word ‘two’. Yet in his opinion this only indicated the presupposition of doubt, especially because it was clear to him that as soon as I, as spirit, become two, I am eo ipso three. If there were nothing but dichotomies, doubt would not exist, for the possibility of doubt lies precisely in that third which places the two in relation to each other. One cannot therefore say that reflection produces doubt, unless one expressed oneself backwards; one must say that doubt presupposes reflection, though not in a temporal sense. Doubt arises through a relation between two, but for this to take place the two must exist, although doubt, as a higher expression, comes before rather than afterwards.”

“Christ calls it (O give heed!), He calls it “hypocrisy.” And not only that, but He says (now shudder!), He says that this guilt of hypocrisy is as great, precisely as great a crime as that of killing the prophets. … This then is the judgment, Christ's judgment upon "Christendom."”

“Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.”

“And thus Christianity is played in “Christendom.” Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings— there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career— and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.”

“What is asked of a man that he may be able to pray for his enemies? To pray for one’s enemies is the hardest thing of all. That is why it exasperates us so much in our present day situation.”

“The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.”

“In the New Testament sense, to be a Christian is, in an upward sense, as different from being a man as, in a downward sense, to be a man is different from being a beast. A Christian in the sense of the New Testament, although he stands suffering in the midst of life’s reality, has yet become completely a stranger to this life; in the words of the Scripture and also of the Collects (which still are read-O bloody satire!-by the sort of priests we now have, and in the ears of the sort of Christians that now live) he is a stranger and a pilgrim-just think, for example of the late Bishop Mynster intoning, “We are strangers and pilgrims in this world”! A Christian in the New Testament sense is literally a stranger and a pilgrim, he feels himself a stranger, and everyone involuntarily feels that this man is a stranger to him.”

“A genius and an Apostle are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence.”

“Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.”

“Source: Without Authority by Soren Kierkegaard, Hong 1997 P. 145ff”

“The next thing you can learn from the woman who was a sinner, something she herself understood, is that with regard to finding forgiveness she is able to do nothing at all. P. 155”

“He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.”

“This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication? p. 112”

“Editor’s Preface In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous author to the supreme ideality. Yet the requirement should indeed be stated, presented, and heard. From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it-instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard-and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone—so that I might learn not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace. S. K.”