Emil Cioran Quotes
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We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.
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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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Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.
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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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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
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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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One hardly saves a world without ruling it.
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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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Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.
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I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.
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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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What a judgment upon the living, if it is true, as has been maintained, that what dies has never existed!
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There is no one whose death I have not longed for, at one moment or another.
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Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.
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To be is to be cornered.
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Reality is a creation of our excesses.
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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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The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.
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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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After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?
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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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I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person.
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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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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.