Emile M. Cioran Quotes

The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclusion of time. Our reflexes and our pride transform into a planet the parcel of flesh and consciousness we are.

For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

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.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

Society: an inferno of saviors!

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.

The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.

Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

Word - that invisible dagger.

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.

Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others.

He who hates himself is not humble.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

Try to be free: you will die of hunger.

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life.

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

To defy heredity is to defy billions of years, to defy the first cell

To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer. As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being.

I have always struggled, with the sole intention of ceasing to struggle. Result: zero.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

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?

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.

Normal people have nothing to forget.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.