Emil Cioran Quotes
-
The wrinkles of a nation are as visible as those of an individual.
-
Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.
-
To be is to be cornered.
-
Wisdom disguises our wounds; it teaches us how to bleed in secret.
-
Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.
-
Eternity is absence.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Revenge is not always sweet: once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.
-
What a judgment upon the living, if it is true, as has been maintained, that what dies has never existed!
-
'Neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness are for the being abandoned to doubt.' - This point in the Gita is my death sentence.
-
We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.
-
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.
-
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.
-
Espousing the melancholy of ancient symbols, I would have freed myself.
-
The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!
-
I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night.
-
It is unjust to call imaginary the diseases which are, on the contrary, only too real, since they proceed from our mind, the only regulator of our equilibrium and our health.
-
All philosophers should end their days at Pythia’s feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.
-
If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."
-
The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.
-
Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.
-
No one has the audacity to exclaim: 'I don’t want to do anything!' -we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.
-
The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.