Emil Cioran Quotes
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It has been a long time since philosophers have read men’s souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.
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It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life, but what else is there to say?
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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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It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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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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For a long time-always, in fact-I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.
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Two enemies - the same man divided.
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Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
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The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer.
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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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What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
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Consciousness is nature's nightmare.
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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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Sadness makes you God's prisoner.
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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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To live in a saint's heart? I'm afraid of setting the sky ablaze.
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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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At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...
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I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.
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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?
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What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.
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I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.
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Erosion of our being by our infirmities: the resulting void is filled by the presence of consciousness, what am I saying? - that void is consciousness itself.