Emil Cioran Quotes
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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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What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts.
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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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Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?
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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.
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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.
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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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Except for music, everything is a lie, even solitude, even ecstasy. Music, in fact, is the one and the other, only better.
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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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The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.
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Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.
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As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad.
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What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.
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We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.
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Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!
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Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.
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Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
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Pursued by our origins…we all are.
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Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.
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After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?
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When I happen to be busy, I never give a moment's thought to the 'meaning' of anything, particularly of whatever it is I am doing. A proof that the secret of everything is in action and not abstention, that fatal cause of consciousness.
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Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
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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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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.