Emil Cioran Quotes
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Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.
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To be is to be cornered.
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Try as I will, I don't see what might exist...
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The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the 'meaning' of life.
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When you know that every problem is only a false problem, you are dangerously close to salvation.
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One hardly saves a world without ruling it.
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If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.
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To try curing someone of a 'vice,' of what is the deepest thing he has, is to attack his very being, and this is indeed how he himself understands it, since he will never forgive you for wanting him to destroy himself in your way and not his.
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There is no one whose death I have not longed for, at one moment or another.
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Erosion of our being by our infirmities: the resulting void is filled by the presence of consciousness, what am I saying? - that void is consciousness itself.
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There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.
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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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Revenge is not always sweet: once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.
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Eternity is absence.
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Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.
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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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By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.
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Wisdom disguises our wounds; it teaches us how to bleed in secret.
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I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.
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What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!
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In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.
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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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All philosophers should end their days at Pythia’s feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.
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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.