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
"The aesthetic is the immediate, the ethical is the choice, the religious is the infinite passion of inwardness."
"The present age is essentially a sensible, reflecting age, which is without passion, and which therefore breaks out into no enthusiasm."
"The absurd is the essential factor in faith."
"The greatest good for a human being is to be able to choose himself."
"The aesthetic is that which is immediately perceived, the ethical is that which is chosen, and the religious is that which is believed."
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.