Emil Cioran Quotes

To possess a high degree of consciousness, to be always aware of yourself in relation to the world, to live in the permanent tension of knowledge, means to be lost for life.

Emil Cioran

Quotes to Explore

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.

Emil Cioran
- World
- Mood
Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

Emil Cioran
- Ambition
- Drug
The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.

Emil Cioran
- Up
- Feeling
- Charity
Impossible for me to know whether or not I take myself seriously. The drama of detachment is that we cannot measure its progress. We advance into a desert, and we never know where we are in it.

Emil Cioran
- Progress
- Drama
- Desert
To conceive a thought - just one, but one that would tear the universe to pieces.

Emil Cioran
- Universe
Life is not, and death is a dream. Suffering has invented them both as self-justification. Man alone is torn between an unreality and an illusion.

Emil Cioran
- Life
- Death
- Dream