All that shimmers on the surface of the world, all that we call interesting, is the fruit of ignorance and inebriation.
Emile M. CioranWhat music appeals to in us it is difficult to know; what we do know is that music reaches a zone so deep that madness itself cannot penetrate there.
Emile M. CioranEverything 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.
Emile M. CioranThe obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.
Emile M. CioranWhen every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.
Emile M. CioranI was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions-only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. ... This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.
Emile M. Cioran