Soren Kierkegaard — "To be a human being is to be in a state of eternal becoming, and that is why no …"
To be a human being is to be in a state of eternal becoming, and that is why no one can capture himself in a definition.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The greatest good is not to be born."
"The aesthetic is that which is immediately perceived, the ethical is that which is chosen, and the religious is that which is believed."
"The very concept of a 'public' makes a mockery of individuality."
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
"Despair is the sickness unto death, this tormenting contradiction, this sickness in the self; it is to be eternally dying, to die and yet not die, to die the death."
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.