Quotes from Emil Cioran

Dup? orice conversaÅ£ie, eÅŸti mai p?r?sit ca în mormânt. Å¢i?ai uÅŸurat spiritul ÅŸi Å£i?a putrezit inima. Vorbele au zburat în vânt ÅŸi cu ele substanÅ£a izol?rii tale.

Bach, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dostoievski ÅŸi Nietzsche sunt singurul argument împotriva monoteismului.

The Real gives me asthma.

Though we may prefer ourselves to the universe, we nonetheless loathe ourselves much more than we suspect. If the wise man is so rare a phenomenon, it is because he seems unshaken by the aversion which, like all beings, he must feel for himself.

It is our discomforts which provoke, which create consciousness; their task accomplished, they weaken and disappear one after the other. Consciousness however remains and survives them, without recalling what it owes to them, without even ever having known. Hence it continually proclaims its autonomy, its sovereignty, even when it loathes itself and would do away with itself.

We had nothing to say to one another, and while I was manufacturing my phrases I felt that earth was falling through space and that I was falling with it at a speed that made me dizzy.

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.

What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know what that elsewhere is.

Marea e duhovnicul meu.?- ce mult îmi place aceast? fraz? a Elisabetei de Austria!

Every phenomenon is a corrupt version of another, larger phenomenon: time, a disease of eternity; history, a disease of time; life, again, a disease of matter. Then what is normal, what is healthy? Eternity? Which itself is only an infirmity of God.

Ce s? mai cauÅ£i printre muritori când tu cânÅ£i din org? ÅŸi ei din fluier?

Ce poate fi mai deprimant decât faptul c? ultimul avorton posed? facultatea de a da via??, de-a "aduce pe lume"? Cum s? nu te cuprind? spaima sau sila când te gândeÅŸti la miracolul ce face din primul venit un demiurg pe puncte? Ceea ce trebuia sa fie un dar la fel de excepÅ£ional ca ÅŸi geniul a fost distribuit tuturora de-a valma: generozitate de spe?? joas? ce descalific? pe vecie natura.

Ce-i vom raspunde oarbei care se plange in poezia lui Rilke: «nu mai pot trai asa cu cerul pe mine»? Oare am mangaia-o de i-am spune ca nu mai putem trai cu pamantul sub noi?

The initial revelation of any monastery: everything is nothing. Thus begin all mysticisms. It is less than one step from nothing to God, for God is the positive expression of nothingness.

The Romans were not wiped out by the invasions of the barbarians, nor by the Christian virus, but by a more subtle evil, boredom.

Iti trebuie o pasiune mare pana la imbecilitate pentru a putea iubi o singura femeie.

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping

Dac?-mi place atîta corespondenÅ£a lui Dostoievski e pentru c? acolo nu e vorba decît de boal? ÅŸi de bani, unice subiecte <>. Tot restul nu e decît înflorituri ÅŸi talmeÅŸ-balmeÅŸ.

It is trifling to believe in what you do or in what others do. You should avoid simulacra and even "realities"; you should take up a position external to everything and everyone, drive off or grind down your appetites, live, according to a Hindu adage, with as few desires as a "solitary elephant.

We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented—we're born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt—tone is more than talent, it is its essence.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.

We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.

Ever since I was born"—that since has a resonance so dreadful to my ears it becomes unendurable.

A remark of my brother's apropos of the troubles and pains our mother endured: "Old age is nature's self-criticism.