Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
Meaning of the quote
In this quote, Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, compares two types of longing. Just like lovers yearn to express their love for each other and become one, a mystic (someone deeply interested in spiritual matters) longs to connect with God through prayer. The mystic wants to get as close to God as possible, just as lovers want to get close to each other.
About Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first Christian existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables.
More quotes from Soren Kierkegaard
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
During the first period of a man’s life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Once you label me you negate me.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Don’t forget to love yourself.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth – look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Be that self which one truly is.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
Danish theologian, philosopher, poet and social critic (1813-1855)