“There are particular occasions when one may be most painfully moved to see a person standing utterly alone in the world. The other day I saw a poor girl walking utterly alone to church to be confirmed.”
Søren Kierkegaard
The quote comes from the Diapsalmata, a collection of aphorisms that opens Either/Or (1843). Kierkegaard published the book under the pseudonym Victor Eremita, and within it the Diapsalmata are attributed to a further fictional figure called “A,” a young aesthete. Kierkegaard deliberately used such pseudonyms to signal that these viewpoints were not necessarily his own.
Either/Or (Primary source)
Either/Or, published under the pseudonym Victor Eremita (“victorious hermit”), presents a dialectical exploration of two contrasting life views: the aesthetic and the ethical.
“Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“Pleasure disappoints; possibility does not.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“No one comes back from the dead; no one has come into the world without weeping. No one asks when one wants to come in; no one asks when one wants to go out.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary sourceMore quotes by Søren Kierkegaard →
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Love the day.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary sourceLoneliness Alone Religion Sympathy