søren kierkegaard

I was just looking up a quote and found all these quotes by Kierkegaard by accident. When Judah was born we almost named him Soren cause we like him (Kierkegaard) so much. But then there was the whole thing about do we put the omelet or umlaut or whatever over/through the o, and does it sound too much like "sore end" and are we being precious by naming him such, and then Judah has such a good story behind his name that it won out. Anyway. I didn't find the quote I was looking for but I kept reading the pages of these quotes and loved them so hard I copied my favorite ones to put here for posterity.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Don't forget to love yourself.
Soren Kierkegaard


Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
Soren Kierkegaard

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
Soren Kierkegaard

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Soren Kierkegaard


It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
Soren Kierkegaard

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
Soren Kierkegaard

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Once you label me you negate me.
Soren Kierkegaard

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
Soren Kierkegaard

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Soren Kierkegaard

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
Soren Kierkegaard

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Soren Kierkegaard

Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Soren Kierkegaard

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Soren Kierkegaard

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.
Soren Kierkegaard

the 30-day christian music listening challenge

I decided to take this challenge. They invite our responses so I'll be blogging about it here. Day 1. Morgan Spurlock, signing off.

have you ever touched...

Gregg and Simone came up with this game on a road trip and we played it on our last road trip down to San Francisco. It's called "Have You Ever Touched" and it's not as gross as it sounds. It really provides an opportunity for soul-searching and personal reflection. Here's what I came up with:

Have you ever touched...
A reflective circle on the road?
Powdered seahorse?
Your grandpa's license plate?
A cat tonsil?
A bottle of horny goat weed?
Raw lamb?
Your therapist's hair?
A Mexican's body piercing?
The backseat of a cop car?
An Oregonian?
Truck nuts?
A pager?
Bryan Setzer?

Here's what David came up with:

An enlisted man's haircut?
Not your own bunion?
A living bone?
Unpurchased cake?
The Red Robin mascot?
The inside of a football helmet?
A homeless man's shoe?
A colostomy bag?
A hockey puck?
A stranger's food?
A hooker?
A toupee?
A bail bondsman?
the inside of your own asshole?
A Big Mac?
A communion wafer?
A foam cowboy hat?
A black dildo?
A grandma's underpants?
A clubbed foot?
A cleft palate?
North Dakota?
A slug antennae?

the blue colored week of advent

I was so touched by this email from my friend Kara (a Presbyterian minister in Minnesota) tonight:

"Oh, I meant to tell you - our poignant and wonderfully honest blue Christmas ritual was the other night. We put our prayers on these balls and lit candles for people. I posted other pictures of it on the church's FB account, but I wanted you to know you and your church were held in prayer that evening. For courage to stay with the grief."

Yay for Christmas and hope!

my husband will be on NPR

That's fun to say! David's short story "Things We Knew When The House Caught Fire" airs on NPR's Selected Shorts over the next week! Here is the schedule.

Nashville, TN WPLN-AM 1430 Sat Dec 18 5:00 PM
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX KERA-FM 90.1 Sat Dec 18 7:00 PM
San Francisco KQED-FM 88.5 Sat Dec 18 8:00 PM
San Luis Obispo, CA KCBX-FM 90.1 Sun Dec 19 6:00 PM
New York, NY WNYC-FM 93.9 Sat Dec 18 10:00 PM
New York, NY WNYC-AM 820 Sat Dec 19 1:00 PM
Austin, TX KUT-FM 90.5 Sun Dec 19 5:00 PM
San Francisco KALW-FM 91.7 Sun Dec 19 5:00 PM
Seattle KUOW-FM 94.9 Tue Dec 21 10:00 PM

1954's house of the year, and "who you finna try?"

Drooling over this house in Portland. It was 1954's house of the year, I guess.



Cracking up at this poor guy just trying to watch tv. He did handle the situation effectively.

an irishman tells it like it is