Emil Cioran Quotes
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Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.
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What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
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There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.
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Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.
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We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.
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Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.
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Skepticism is an exercise in defascination.
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We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented-we’re born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt-tone is more than talent, it is its essence.
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In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left...with a foolish grin.
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I find in myself as much evil as in anyone, but detesting action - mother of all vices - I am the cause of no one's suffering.
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By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
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Awareness of time: assault on time...
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A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life
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To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.
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Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
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…all of the philosophers put together are not worth a single saint.
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The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.
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When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, 'What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.' And they do calm down.
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To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally...
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A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime...
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I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.
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Who does not believe in Fate proves that he has not lived.
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Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.
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To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.