"Han var en i sig selv og sit Indre meget indforviklet Natur.... Egentligt christeligt Sind og Gemyt veed jeg ei, om han har havt, skjønt han dog vist maa have havt Noget deraf." Således skriver den 84-årige Sibbern om Kierkegaard, hvem han som professor i filosofi lærte at kende i begyndelsen af 1830'erne, og hvis disputats Om Begrebet Ironi han var med til at bedømme. I forlovelsestiden var han undertiden med i kareten, når det unge par tog i Dyrehaven, men om deres forhold nægtede han sidenhen at udtale sig, skønt han ellers ville kunne "fortælle, hvad maaske kun meget Faa vide foruden mig". En sådan tavshed kan man da godt ærgre sig lidt over.		"He was, inherently and in his innermost being, a very inwardly complicated sort of person. ... I don't know whether he had a genuinely Christian disposition and temperament, although he certainly must have had something of that sort." Thus writes the 84 year old Sibbern about Kierkegaard, whom he, as professor of philosphy, had met in the beginning of the 1830's, and whose dissertation On the Concept of Irony he had been involved in judging. During the period of Kierkegaard's engagement he was sometimes in the carriage when the young couple went to the Deer Park, but he refused later to speak of their relationship, though he would have been able to "tell, what perhaps only very few besides me know." Such a silence is somewhat annoying.

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