Either/or by Soren Kierkegaard

One of my many interests in life is philosophy. I had the pleasure of reading Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard. He basically says that one can either live an aesthetic or an ethical life. An aesthetic lifestyle eventually leads to despair because sooner or later one will get bored, as this life has its limits. I’m not sure why one can’t live both aesthetically and ethically.

But anyway, I found several quotes in the book which I found to be simply delightful; and so I am setting them out here:

I have only one confidant, the silence of the night. And why is it my confidant? Because it is silent.

This is part of the confusion evident in so many ways in our age: we look for a thing where we ought not to look for it; and worse, we find it where we ought not to find it.

 Yesterday I loved, 

 Today I suffer,

 Tomorrow I die.

 Yet fain would I think

 Today and tomorrow, 

 Of yesterday. 

 (German poem)

For only someone who has been bitten by snakes knows what the victim of a snake-bite suffers.

And what is life but madness, and faith but folly, and hope but reprieve, and love but salt in the wound?

People of experience maintain that it is very sensible to start from a principle. I grant them that and start with the principle that all men are boring. Or will someone be boring enough to contradict me in this?

‘Boring’ can describe a person who bores others as well as one who bores himself.

...how strange it is that those who don’t bore themselves usually bore others, while those who do bore themselves amuse others. The people who do not bore themselves are generally those who are busy in the world.

Idleness, it is usually said, is a root of all evil.

The root of evil is boredom, and that is what must be kept at bay.

When two people fall in love and suspect they are made for each other, the thing is to have the courage to break it off, for by continuing they only have everything to lose and nothing to gain. It seems a paradox and is so, for feeling, not for understanding.

The girl made an impression upon me and I have forgotten her. The other has made no impression and I can remember her. 

After all, a girl loves only once.

What does love love? Infinitude. 

What does love fear? Limitation.

But I do not create myself, I choose myself.

“No man should be considered happy until he had finished his life happily.”

Said by Solon to Croesus, last king of Lydia (told by Herodotus)

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Matthew 6.34

“I have spoken and freed my mind.”

 Words used by Roman orators to conclude their speeches.