Emil Cioran Quotes
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What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!
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One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
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Pursued by our origins…we all are.
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We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.
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I dream of wanting - and all I want seems to me worthless.
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Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.
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One would have to be as unenlightened as an angel or an idiot to imagine that the human escapade could turn out well.
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To act is to anchor in the imminent future.
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When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve.
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The only profound thinkers are the ones who do not suffer from a sense of the ridiculous.
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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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There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.
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Thanks to depression - that alpinism of the indolent - we scale every summit and daydream over every precipice from our bed.
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Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it. Life would be bearable only to frivolous natures, those in fact who do not remember.
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What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?
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Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.
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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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Refinement is a sign of a deficient vitality, in art, in love, and in everything.
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Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.
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Try to be free: you will die of hunger.
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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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It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.
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We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.