Emil Cioran Quotes
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Wherever we go, we come up against the human, a repulsive ubiquity before which we fall into stupor and revolt, a perplexity on fire.
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Everything exists; nothing exists. Either formula affords a like serenity. The man of anxiety, to his misfortune, remains between them, trembling and perplexed, forever at the mercy of a nuance, incapable of gaining a foothold in the security of being or in the absence of being.
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Existence would be a quite impracticable enterprise if we stopped granting importance to what has none.
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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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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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Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with our kind: the more we practice it, the more we become like everyone else: it is in the performance of a reputedly bestial function that we prove our status as citizens: nothing is more public than the sexual act.
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Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.
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He who hates himself is not humble.
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The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.
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Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.
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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.
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How easy it is to be "deep": all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.
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Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.
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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.
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As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?
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I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide...
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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."
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Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself - there is no wish I make more often.
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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.
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All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.
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The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.
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Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
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No longer ask me for my program: isn't breathing one?
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Since the only things we remember are humiliations and defeats, what is the use of all the rest?