Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the nature of modern existence marked by periods of thoughtfulness and brief surges of excitement.
In this quote, Soren Kierkegaard suggests that contemporary life is characterized by a predominance of understanding and reflection rather than deep passion. He notes that while moments of enthusiasm may arise, they are often fleeting, and individuals tend to retreat into a state of calm and contemplation afterward. This observation comments on the complexities of human emotion and the oscillation between fervor and tranquility in the human experience.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the effects of modern technology on human emotion, this quote highlights the balance between thought and feeling.
More from Soren Kierkegaard
All quotes βMen think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.
How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the managerβI have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.
I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.
Similar quotes
When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
You may bury my body down by the highway side. So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.
Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security.
Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
In the real world there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects
Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.