Emil Cioran Quotes
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We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...
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We are all secularised anarchists today.
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To act is to anchor in the imminent future.
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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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In our fear, we are victims of an aggression of the Future.
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We are all of us in error, the humorists excepted. They alone have discerned, as though in jest, the inanity of all that is serious and even of all that is frivolous.
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To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.
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Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
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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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On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I.'
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How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.
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To suffer is to produce knowledge.
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The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.
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The only subversive mind is the one that questions the obligation to exist; all the others, the anarchist at the top of the list, compromise with the established order.
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Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego… Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world?
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It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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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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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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What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?
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A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime...
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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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The state of health is a state of nonsensation, even of nonreality. As soon as we cease to suffer, we cease to exist.
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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?