Emil Cioran Quotes
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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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If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
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How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.
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All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.
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If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.
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Since the only things we remember are humiliations and defeats, what is the use of all the rest?
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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 possess a high degree of consciousness, to be always aware of yourself in relation to the world, to live in the permanent tension of knowledge, means to be lost for life.
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Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour.
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Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are sometimes fruitful.
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Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
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Try as I will, I don't see what might exist...
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Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.
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I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.
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The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.
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When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment.
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Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.
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One disgust, then another - to the point of losing the use of speech and even of the mind...The greatest exploit of my life is to be still alive.
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We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is link to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.
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The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.
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We always love...despite; and that 'despite' covers an infinity.
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'You really should come to the house - one of these days we might die without having seen each other again.' - 'Since we have to die in any case, what's the use of seeing each other again?'
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If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.
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It is because we are all impostors that we endure each other. The man who does not consent to lie will see the earth shrink under his feet: we are biologically obliged to the false.