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The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the 'meaning' of life.
Emil Cioran
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All philosophers should end their days at Pythia’s feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.
Emil Cioran
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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
Emil Cioran
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'Neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness are for the being abandoned to doubt.' - This point in the Gita is my death sentence.
Emil Cioran
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Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.
Emil Cioran
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Wisdom disguises our wounds; it teaches us how to bleed in secret.
Emil Cioran
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If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.
Emil Cioran
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Refinement is a sign of a deficient vitality, in art, in love, and in everything.
Emil Cioran
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If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
Emil Cioran
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I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis, consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool.
Emil Cioran
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I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person.
Emil Cioran
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The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.
Emil Cioran
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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.
Emil Cioran
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I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide...
Emil Cioran
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Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.
Emil Cioran
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To win the guilty kiss of a saint, I'd welcome the plague as a blessing
Emil Cioran
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One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
Emil Cioran
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Try as I will, I don't see what might exist...
Emil Cioran
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Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
Emil Cioran
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The reasons for persisting in Being seem less and less well founded, and our successors will find it easier than we to be rid of such obstinacy.
Emil Cioran
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If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, 'what good did it do the occupant to be born?' I now put the same question about anyone alive.
Emil Cioran
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Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.
Emil Cioran
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No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.
Emil Cioran
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Though we may prefer ourselves to the universe, we nonetheless loathe ourselves much more than we suspect. If the wise man is so rare a phenomenon, it is because he seems unshaken by the aversion which, like all beings, he must feel for himself.
Emil Cioran
