Emil Cioran Quotes
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What a judgment upon the living, if it is true, as has been maintained, that what dies has never existed!
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A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.
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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
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One hardly saves a world without ruling it.
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Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.
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The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!
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Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
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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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Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.
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Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.
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Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.
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The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.
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If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame.
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To be is to be cornered.
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Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.
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Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.
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The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer.
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Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.
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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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Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil.
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Without its assiduity to the ridiculous, would the human race have lasted more than a single generation?
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Reality is a creation of our excesses.
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Nothing is indefensible - from the absurdest proposition to the most monstrous crime.
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Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are.