# Quote — Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

> Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of modern philosophy, every Privatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and ill-timed to ask them where they are going.

- Author: [Søren Kierkegaard](https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard.md)
- Book: [Fear and Trembling](https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard/fear-and-trembling.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fear_and_Trembling#Preface) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard/fear-and-trembling/not-merely-in-the

## More from this book

> Once when the price of spices in Holland fell, the merchants had a few cargoes sunk in the sea in order to jack up the price. Do we need something similar in the world of the spirit? Are we so sure that we have achieved the highest, so that there is nothing left for us to do except piously to delude ourselves into thinking that we have not come that far, simply in order to have something to occupy one’s time> is this the kind of self-deception the present age needs? Should it be trained in the virtuosity along that line, or is it not, instead adequately perfected in the art of deceiving itself?

p. 121 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard/fear-and-trembling/once-when-the.md)

> A man rouges his face and wears a periwig. The same man is eager to try his fortune with the fair sex, he is perfectly sure of conquering by the aid of the rouge and the periwig which make him absolutely irresistible. He captures a girl and is at the acme of happiness. Now comes the gist of the matter: if he is able to admit this embellishment, he does not lose all of his infatuating power; when he reveals himself as a plain ordinary man, and bald at that, he does not thereby lose the loved one.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard/fear-and-trembling/a-man-rouges.md)

> Faust fulfills this idea. Anyone who has a notion of what it means for a person to live on spirit also knows what the hunger of doubt means and knows that the doubter hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for the nourishment of spirit.

p. 109 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/soren-kierkegaard/fear-and-trembling/faust-fulfills-this.md)