Emil Cioran Quotes
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How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.
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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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To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.
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Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!
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What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts.
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The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.
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We are all secularised anarchists today.
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We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.
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The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.
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Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
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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.
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'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?'
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A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime...
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What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.
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Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
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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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Pursued by our origins…we all are.
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What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?
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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.
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Sadness makes you God's prisoner.
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No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity;––for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.
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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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Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.
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At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference.