Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Soren KierkegaardRead
To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Deceiving oneself to avoid love leads to profound and irreparable loss.
This quote by Soren Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of love in our lives and warns against the act of self-deception, where one might choose to forego love for fear or pride. Such a choice results in a deep, lasting emptiness that cannot be remedied, highlighting love's irreplaceable value and the existential consequences of denying it.
Themes
LoveDeceptionLossRelationshipSelf-DeceptionExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of relationships, one could say, 'As Kierkegaard reminds us, to cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception.'
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.
Soren KierkegaardRead
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?
Soren KierkegaardRead
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
Soren KierkegaardRead
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.
Soren KierkegaardRead
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.
Soren KierkegaardRead
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They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?
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Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.
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Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.
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