Emil M. Cioran

Quotes

• “Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c'est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux ...”
• “It is no sign of benediction to have been obsessed with the lives of saints, for it is an obsession intertwined with a t...”
• “No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it...”
• “Animal banished from life, man's condition is tragic, for he no longer finds fulfillment in life's simple values. For an...”
• “The one who had not ever conceived his own annulment, who had not foreseen the resource of the cord, the bullet, the poi...”
• “The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about de...”
• “What are the occupations of the sage? He resigns himself to seeing, to eating, etc…., he accepts in spite of himself thi...”
• “Only the mediocre want to die of old age. Suffer, then, drink pleasure to its last dregs, cry or laugh, scream in despai...”
• “Every phenomenon is a corrupt version of another, largerphenomenon: time, a disease of eternity; history, a disease ofti...”
• “Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable car...”
• “As far back as I can remember, I’ve utterly destroyed within myself the pride of being human. And I saunter to the perip...”
• “My soul is chaos, how can it be at all? There is everything in me: search and you will find out ... in me anything is po...”
• “As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for...”
• “The sense that everything is going wrong has existed in every era, and rightly so since men have found no greater pleasu...”
• “The contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and w...”
• “That there should be a reality hidden behind appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such ...”
• “The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves ...”
• “The more we frequent men, the blacker our thoughts; and when, to clarify them, we return to our solitude, we find there ...”
• “We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as ...”
• “For the normal man, life is an undisputed reality; only the sick man is delighted by life and praises it so that he won'...”
• “Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little l...”
• “the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of...”
• “True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to as...”
• “Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to st...”
• “It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injusti...”
• “Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life.”
• “One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.”
• “Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.”
• “The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.”
• “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
• “Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.”
• “Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.”
• “How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.”
• “I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.”
• “If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.”
• “I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide...”
• “We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.”
• “The cynicism of utter solitude is a calvary relieved by insolence.”
• “Only god has the privilege of abandoning us. Men can only drop us”
• “Ambition is a drug that turns it's addicts into potential madmen.”
• “Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.”
• “Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”
• “Tolerance cannot seduce the young.”