"The question is not "To be or..." - Quote by Soren Kierkegaard
The question is not "To be or not to be," it is what we should be until we are not.
More by Soren Kierkegaard
“Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
“...my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin.”
“However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.”
More on Existence
“Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.”
“Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world?”
“The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.”
More on Purpose
“Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend.”
“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.”
“Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.”