Emil M. Cioran
28 quotes
Biography
Emil Mihai Cioran was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms.
"What are the occupations of the sage? He resigns himself to seeing, to eating, etc…., he accepts in spite of himself this “wound with nine openings,” which is what the Bhagavad-Gita calls the body.―Wisdom? To undergo with dignity the humiliation inflicted upon us by our holes."
"It is no sign of benediction to have been obsessed with the lives of saints, for it is an obsession intertwined with a taste for maladies and hunger for depravities. One only troubles oneself with saints because one has been disappointed by the paradoxes of earthly life; one therefore searches out other paradoxes, more outlandish in guise, redolent of unknown truths, unknown perfumes..."
"If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God."
"For the normal man, life is an undisputed reality; only the sick man is delighted by life and praises it so that he won't collapse."
"I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers."
"The sense that everything is going wrong has existed in every era, and rightly so since men have found no greater pleasure than in inventing new ways to make each other miserable."
"Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone."
"We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job..."
"The one who had not ever conceived his own annulment, who had not foreseen the resource of the cord, the bullet, the poison or the sea, is a debased prisoner or a crawling worm on the cosmic carrion. This world can take off us everything, it can forbid us everything, but nobody can't prevent us our self-abolition."
"That there should be a reality hidden behind appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope."
"Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?"
"Only the mediocre want to die of old age. Suffer, then, drink pleasure to its last dregs, cry or laugh, scream in despair or with joy, sing about death or love, for nothing will endure! Morality can only make life a long series of missed opportunities."
"As far back as I can remember, I’ve utterly destroyed within myself the pride of being human. And I saunter to the periphery of the Race like a timorous monster, lacking the energy to claim kinship with some other band of apes."
"The contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer."
"Ambition is a drug that turns it's addicts into potential madmen."
"Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim."
"I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies."
"No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it is so. Then why celebrate or denigrate? Because to exist is to evaluate, to emit judgments, and because abstention, when it is not the effect of apathy or cowardice, requires an effort no one manages to make."
"It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice."
"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 linked to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone."
"Tolerance cannot seduce the young."
"We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves."
"The more we frequent men, the blacker our thoughts; and when, to clarify them, we return to our solitude, we find there the shadow they have cast."
"The cynicism of utter solitude is a calvary relieved by insolence."
"I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece."