Quotes from Fear and Trembling

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“...why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“No, not one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“هر كس به قدر عظمت آن چه با آن زورآزمايى كرد بزرگى يافت:
آن كس كه با جهان ستيز كرد با چيرگى بر جهان بزرگ شد؛
و آن كس كه با خويشتن نبرد كرد با چيرگى بر خويشتن بزرگ شد؛
امّا آن كس كه با خدا زورآزمايى كرد از همه بزرگ تر بود.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“For it is not what happens to me that makes me great, but it is what I do.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“He who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it may in turn so entirely forget it was a butterfly that is becomes a fish.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything, everything, everything exactly as it is – and yet why was this torment one you never gave voice to? Was it perhaps that you kept it to yourself, like the beloved whose name one still cannot bear the world to mention? For a poet buys this power of words to utter all the grim secrets of others at the cost of a little secret he himself cannot utter.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“People unable to bear the martyrdom [...] unintelligently jump off the path, and choose instead, conveniently enough, the world’s admiration of their proficiency. The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity in him which is more worth than this foolish concern for others’ weal and woe which is honoured under the name of sympathy, but which is really nothing but vanity.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“...for our times are not satisfied with faith and not even with the miracle of changing water into wine - they 'go right on,' changing wine into water.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“وفي حالة ذلك الشاب الغني الذي التقى به المسيح في الطريق وباع كل بضاعته وأعطى الفقير-فإننا ينبغي أن نمجده كما نمجد كل شئ عظيم-وإن كنا لا نستطيع أن نفهمه دون أن نكدح”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life’s swamp, will naturally cry out, “Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer’s widow is a match fully as good and respectable.” Let them croak.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“For the universal will constantly torture him and say, 'You ought to have talked. Where will you find the certainty that it was not after all a hidden pride which governed your resolution?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“I am courteous enough to assume that everyone in this so aesthetically voluptuous age, so potent and aroused that conception occurs as easily as with the partridge which, Aristotle says, needs only to hear the voice of the cock or its flight overhead - to assume that at the mere sound of the word 'concealment' everyone can easily shake a dozen romances and comedies from his sleeve.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“ومن المفترض أن فهم هيجل شئ صعب،على أن فهم إبراهيم شئ تافه،وتجاوز هيجل يعد معجزة،أما تجاوز إبراهيم فأسهل شئ على الإطلاق،أما أنا-فمن ناحيتي-قد كرست وقتاً طويلاً لفهم الفلسفة الهيجلية،ولكن عندما تكون هناك فقرات معينة لا أستطيع أن أفهمها على الرغم من المشقة التي أخذت بها نفسي،فإنني من الجرأة بحيث أعتقد أن هيجل نفسه لم يكن واضحاً تمام الوضوح”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“*يقولون في سالف الأيام "إنه لشئ يدعو إلى الرثاء ألا تجري الأمور في العالم على نحو ما يعظ القس"-وربما جاء الوقت الذي سوف يقولون فيه،بمعونة الفلسفة على الأخص-من حسن الحظ أن الأمور لا تجري على النحو الذي يعظ به القس-فهناك على كل حال شئ من المعنى في الحياة-ولكن وعظه يخلو من كلّ معنى”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“إن ما يغفلونه في قصة إبراهيم هو القلق”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

“يقول مثل قديم مأخوذ من العالم الخارجي المرئي "لن ينال الخبز إلا الرجل الكادح" والغريب أن هذا المثل لا ينطبق بصدق في ذلك العالم الذي ينتمي إليه بجلاء ذلك أن عالم الظاهر خاضع لقانون النقص-وفيه تتكرر حيناً بعد آخر تلك التجربة التي نرى فيها أن من لا يعمل يحصل أيضاً على الخبز-بل إن من ينام يحصل عليه بوفرة أكثر من الرجل الكادح،فهذا العالم اسير لقانون عدم الاكتراث(أو قانون استواء الطرفين)-أما في عالم الروح فالأمر جد مختلف-فهنا يسود النظام الإلهي الأبدي-وهنا لا تمطر السماء على العادل والظالم سواء-وهنا لا تشرق الشمس على الطيب والشرير معاً-وهنا ينطبق ذلك المثل-من يعمل هو وحده الذي يحصل على الخبز-ومن لا يعمل لا يحصل على الخبز بل يبقى مخدوعاً-وأن من يحيا في القلق وحده الذي يجد الراحة-وأن من يشهر السكين هو وحده الذي ينقذ اسحق”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling

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“We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.”
― Christopher Ryan, quote from Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

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