Quotes from Emil Cioran

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?

Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

Tears do not burn except in solitude.

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

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

How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.

Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

???? ???? ????? ????? ?? ?? ??????? ??? ?? ?????????. ??? ????? ?????????? I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.