Emil Cioran Quotes
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Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
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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 feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity…
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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 I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.
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To act is to anchor in the imminent future.
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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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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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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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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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What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts.
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We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.
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At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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Two enemies - the same man divided.
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It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?
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What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?
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Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
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Consciousness is nature's nightmare.
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Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are.
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The only minds which seduce us are the minds which have destroyed themselves trying to give their life a meaning.
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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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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.