Soren Kierkegaard — "To be a Christian is the most terrible of all things, if one really means it."
To be a Christian is the most terrible of all things, if one really means it.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"Comparison is the end of happiness and the beginning of dissatisfaction."
"The present age is an age of reflection, an age of calculation, an age of prudence, an age of prudence in its highest degree."
"The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: Create silence! Bring men to silence!"
"All communication is indirect communication."
"The present age is essentially the age of understanding, of reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and then shrewdly relapsing into repose."
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.