Emil Cioran Quotes
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What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.
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Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.
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For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.
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The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave’s virtue.
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A gifted humanity can only produce skeptics, never saints.
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A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people.
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Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.
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History proves nothing because it contains everything.
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As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.
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Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.
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The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.
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If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.
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Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!
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I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.
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Word - that invisible dagger.
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To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.
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Of all that makes us suffer, nothing - so much as disappointment - gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.
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Objection to scientific knowledge: this world doesn't deserve to be known.
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I long to be free-desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.
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'Do I look like someone who has something to do here on Earth?' - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.
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A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
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Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.
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Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.
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When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, 'What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.' And they do calm down.