Kierkegaard on despair

March 16, 2026 Mike Zonta Leave a comment

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

~ Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and writer who is widely considered the father of existentialism. His prolific writing career, spanning 1843–1850, explored themes of faith, existence, and truth. Kierkegaard’s work crossed the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, and his ideas have had a lasting impact on these fields. Wikipedia.org

Born May 5, 1813, Copenhagen, Denmark

Died November 11, 1855 (age 42 years), Copenhagen, Denmark

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Quotes

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“Under and behind the universed of time, space and change is a fundamental reality.”
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“[Diabolic] comes from the Greek word diabolos; ‘diabolic’ is the term in contemporary English. Diabolos, interestingly enough, literally means ‘to tear apart’ (dia-bollein). Now it is fascinating to note that this diabolic is the antonym of ‘symbolic.’ The later comes from sym-bollein, which means ‘to throw together,’ to unite. There lie in these words tremendous implications with respect to an ontology of good and evil. The symbolic is that which draws together, ties, integrates the individual in himself and with his group; the diabolic, in contrast, is that which disintegrates and tears apart. Both of these are present in the daimonic.”
―Rollo May, Love and Will

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“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
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“A word after a word after a word is power.”
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“You have to fall in love with hanging around words.”
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“Energy is primary. Personification is secondary.”
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“Truth is the Law of Contradiction, rendering null and void falsidity.”
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“Falling in love is a form of mystical envisioning in which one sees the beloved as he or she is seen through the eyes of God.”
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“Translation is comfort food for the soul.”
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“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
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“I’m okay with a US Space Force. But what we need most is a Truth Force — one that defends against all enemies of accurate information, both foreign & domestic.”
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“The ego gets what it wants with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence.”
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“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
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“Critique of one’s body without regard to the context of one’s psyche is a form of pornography.”
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“I am a Dictionary.”
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“The Universe loves it when we Translate.”
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“You do not merely stretch rhino leather over your own fair skin, for that would deflect pleasure as well as pain, and you do not permit your being to turn stinking inside a shell, but what you do is swirl yourself in the toughness of dreams.”
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“Truth moves at the speed of now.”
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“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
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“Show up. Dive in. Keep at it.”
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“Give me some TRUTH!”
–Seen on a bumper sticker in Redondo Beach, CA

“At times I think and at times I am.”
–Paul Valéry

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.”
–Simone de Beauvoir

“The Cosmic Intention is to evolve from a thing to a think.”
–Melissa Goodnight, H.W., M.

“It is so respectful to not get involved in somebody else’s angst.”
–Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
–Leonard Cohen, from his song “Anthem”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”
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“If you are not admiring a young man, you are abusing him.”
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“Voting is a spiritual activity.”
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“[B]y man came death. [By God comes life].”
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“The inner children of the past shut up when you listen to them.”
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“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
–R.W. Emerson

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
–Mother Teresa

“Loneliness is the poverty of self, solitude is the richness of self.”
–May Sarton

“Nothing that you lose is real. Nothing that is real can ever be lost.”
–Al Haferkamp, H.W., M.

“Man will not be satisfied until he is everywhere equally present.”
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“Human consciousness is how the universe understands itself.”
–Joe Ciriello, H.W., m

“Gravity is a matter of interest.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“There is NO gender to art.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“What was once invention is now convention.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, but once it gets its pants on, watch out!!!”
–Sir Winston Churchill as revised by Mike Zonta, BB editor

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
–Philo of Alexandria

“You can’t change your shoes while you’re standing in them.”
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“We think it’s the material world that survives us when we die, but without us (Consciousness) there would be no material world in the first place.”
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“Solitude is the cure for loneliness.”
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“Translation [and Releasing the Hidden Splendour] is a form of worship.”
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“Never think of results, just do!”
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“The ear longs to hear what the heart already knows.”
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“Occupy Yourself!”
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“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
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“Curb your God.”
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“When I create art, it’s like holding hands with God.”
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“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
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“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
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“The mind loves truth and so does the body.”
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“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.”
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“Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.”
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“My life is not mine.”
–Rumi

“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”
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“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke

“Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.”
–Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Love? What is it? Most natural pain killer what there is. LOVE.”
–William S. Burrough’s final journal entry

“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I am all other men.”
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“Man is, that he might have joy.”
–Joseph Smith

“To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible.”
–Ernest Holmes in Science of Mind

“People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
–Tom Asacker

“We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.”
— J.M. Barrie in Tommy and Grizel

“If you don’t believe in something greater than yourself, you’ll never do anything greater than yourself.”
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“Boredom is the child of self-centeredness.”
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“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”
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“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that your life could have been any different.”
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“When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.”
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“Don’t look at me like I’ve gotten old or something like that.”
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“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
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“Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away”
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“I REFUSE to participate in a recession.”
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“We believe . . . different from Wall Street. We believe customer No. 1, employee No. 2, and shareholder No. 3. This is my religion.”
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“Fear is a choice.”
–Kurtis Matthews, San Francisco Comedy College

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think”
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“One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
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“When people asked [Jacques Cousteau], ‘Well, Captain, what do you expect to find?’ he always said, ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t go.’”
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“Let life happen to you. Life is in the right, always.”
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“And, as [Picasso] said, at the end of his life, he was in dialogue with the old masters, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens. He thought he was talking to them and that they were talking back to him through his art.”
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“The world breaks everyone but afterwards many are strong at the broken places.”
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“Inside every head is a different world.”
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“Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.”
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“If you’re neurotic and you think, I’m not where I deserve to be or my mother didn’t love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you’re plagued by it ’til it’s cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.”
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“If you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place.”
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“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
–Anais Nin

“Often people think that it’s a question of adrenaline, [that] it’s an adrenaline addiction. I think what they are addicted to essentially is brotherhood. It’s a very healthy impulse that is taking place in a very unhealthy place.”
–Sebastian Junger on troops in combat

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
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“Love well, be loved and do something of value.”
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“Tread softly upon the earth because the faces of the unborn look up at you.”
–James Cameron quoting Brazilian tribal saying

“You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.”
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“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”
–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

“Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.”
–J.D. Salinger

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“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
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“A change in the weather is sufficient to re-create the world and ourselves.”
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“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
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“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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Bathtub Bulletin

Kierkegaard on despair

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Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more