Emil Cioran Quotes
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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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There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.
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It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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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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What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.
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No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.
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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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Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
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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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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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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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Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.
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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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Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.
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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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Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
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Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?
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Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.
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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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Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.
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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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It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.
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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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Consciousness is nature's nightmare.