Soren Kierkegaard — "The greatest thing is to be able to do nothing."
The greatest thing is to be able to do nothing.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The knight of faith is the only happy man, the heir of the finite, whereas the knight of infinite resignation is a stranger and a sojourner."
"Faith is the highest passion in a human being."
"The individual is prior to the species."
"Freedom's possibility is not to be able to do this or that, but to be able to do this and that."
"The greatest good is not to be born, the second is to die soon."
About Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher and theologian considered the founder of existentialism; Either/Or (1843) and Fear and Trembling (1843) explored the leap of faith. Closely associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (his existentialist successor working in the opposite theological direction) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (literary parallel exploring faith-and-despair). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the totalizing system — Kierkegaard called Hegel's system a 'palatial residence' that nobody could actually live in — his entire authorship is structured against Hegelian abstraction in favor of the existing individual's inwardness.
The standard scholarly entry points to Soren Kierkegaard's work: Joakim Garff (University of Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre) — Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (2000); Walter Lowrie (Princeton, his major postwar English translator) — A Short Life of Kierkegaard (1942); C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, philosophy of religion) — Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Soren Kierkegaard.