Burcu > Burcu's Quotes

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
― Simone Weil

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
― Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either - Or

“Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & 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. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

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

“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 manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”
― Søren 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

“Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.”
― Søren 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.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”
― Soren Kierkegaard