Soren Kierkegaard — "My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by…"
My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by the thought of hanging myself.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The most painful state of being is rememberin' the future, particularly the one you'll never have."
"The highest of all is not to understand the highest, but to act upon it."
"The present age is essentially the age of understanding, of reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and then shrewdly relapsing into repose."
"Despair is the sickness unto death."
"The highest good is not to be found in the world, but in God."
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.