Love Quote by Søren Kierkegaard

A Kierkegaard line that reads like an Instagram affirmation becomes, in his hands, a provocation: if you have to be told to love yourself, you are already in trouble. His whole project circles the anxiety of becoming a self - not a brand, not a mood, but a responsibility. "Don't forget" is the giveaway. The danger isn't self-hatred so much as distraction: the slow leak of personhood into public opinion, social roles, and the soothing anesthesia of "the crowd."

The intent is corrective, not comforting. Kierkegaard is allergic to the idea that authenticity is automatic. Love of self, in his universe, isn't narcissism or self-care consumerism; it's the disciplined refusal to treat your own existence as an afterthought. The subtext is stern: you can spend your life performing virtue, romance, or piety and still evade the inward task. Forgetting yourself is the default setting of modern life, and modernity - already in the 1840s - is a machine for producing that forgetfulness.

Context sharpens the edge. In works like The Sickness Unto Death, he frames despair as a misrelation within the self: either not wanting to be oneself or wanting to be oneself without reference to anything higher than ego. "Love yourself" therefore implies a paradoxical humility. To love the self rightly is to accept your limits, your finitude, your accountability - and, for Kierkegaard, your need for God. It's not pep talk; it's existential triage. The sweetness of the phrase is bait. The hook is that becoming a self is work, and neglect is a choice you make every day.