Emile M. Cioran Quotes
"The limit of every pain is an even greater pain."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Pain)
"The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Mind, Result)
"The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Rest)
"The 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. Cioran
(Related: Attention, Impossibility, Man, Obsession, Suicide)
"The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Man)
"The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Truth, Fear, Being, Quest)
"There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be."
- Emile M. Cioran
"Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Society, Disaster, Disease)
"To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Habit, Despair)
"To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Lie, Hope)
"The Universal view melts things into a blur."
- Emile M. Cioran
"The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Idea, Martyr)
"The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Death, Concern, Desire)
"Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Writers)
"So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Madness, Man)
"Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Skepticism)
"Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Life, Decision)
"Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Revenge)
"Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Reason)
"Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Progress, Injustice)
"Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Ideas, Anxiety)
"To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Sacrifice, Envy)
"What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Nothing, Pride)
"Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Open, Silence, Speech)
"We interest others by the misfortune we spread around us."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Interest, Misfortune)
"Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: May)
"Sperm is a bandit in its pure state."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: State)
"Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Books)
"Word - that invisible dagger."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Word)
"Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Power, Hell, Poison, Wonders)
"Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave."
- Emile M. Cioran
"When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Delight)
"What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?"
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Present)
"What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Giving, Name)
"What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?"
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Time, Eternity, Future, Man)
"We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Hope, Meeting)
"We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: God)
"To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Dying, Fame, Want)
"We inhabit a language rather than a country."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Country, Language)
"We die in proportion to the words we fling around us."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Words)
"We derive our vitality from our store of madness."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Madness, Vitality)
"We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Despair, Formula)
"We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves."
- Emile M. Cioran
"We are afraid of the enormity of the possible."
- Emile M. Cioran
"Under each formula lies a corpse."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Formula, Lies)
"Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Conflict, End, Police)
"Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Men, Accomplishment, Appetite)
"Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Tolerance)
"You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Life, Hatred, Living, Man, Mystery)
"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Criticism)
"If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot."
- Emile M. Cioran
"I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?"
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Accident)
"I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Nationality)
"I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Day, Nothing)
"Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Martyrs)
"God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: God, Disease)
"Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?"
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Glory, Worth)
"For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Freedom, Illusion)
"Everything is pathology, except for indifference."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Indifference)
"Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Thought)
"If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Crime)
"Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious."
- Emile M. Cioran
"Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Ambition, Potential)
"Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Fear, Authority, Crime, Glory)
"Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Consciousness)
"Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Being, Chaos)
"By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Nothing, World)
"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Name)
"Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Dream, Sleep)
"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."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Conversation, Invention, Silence, Speech)
"A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Democracy, Paradise, Nation, Nothing)
"A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself."
- Emile M. Cioran
"Our first intuitions are the true ones."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: First)
"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Life, Fact, Meaning, Reason)
"Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Time, Echo)
"No one can enjoy freedom without trembling."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Freedom)
"A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: People, Ideas, Obsessions, Theories)
"Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them."
- Emile M. Cioran
"Nothing proves that we are more than nothing."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Nothing)
"Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Abuse, Liberty, Nothing, Possession)
"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Country, Language)
"One hardly saves a world without ruling it."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: World)
"Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Habit, Negative, First, Freedom, Mind, Needs)
"My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Time, Mission)
"Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Happiness, Music)
"Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Man)
"Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Action, Evil, Man, Order, Violence)
"A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Civilization, Gods)
"Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Parents, Youth)
"No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Being, Disease)
"Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Imagination, Life, Memory)
"In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Evil, Man, World)
"In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Order)
"Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Intelligence, Belief)
"Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?"
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: History, Fear, Boredom, Result)
"It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other."
- Emile M. Cioran
"It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Killing, Worth)
"Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Jealousy, Worship)
"Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Life)
"Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Death, Life)
"A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Enemy)
"In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Paradise, Laws)