Emil Cioran Quotes
-
As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.
-
To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.
-
Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.
-
To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.
-
The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.
-
Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!
-
Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.
-
The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.
-
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
-
Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
-
A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime...
-
Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.
-
The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.
-
The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.
-
I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?
-
Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
-
There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.
-
'Where do you get those superior airs of yours?' 'I've managed to survive, you see, all those nights when I wondered: am I going to kill myself at dawn?'
-
To suffer is to produce knowledge.
-
Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.
-
Read day and night, devour books-these sleeping pills-not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.
-
In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.
-
What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
-
A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life