Quotes from Emil Cioran

What a swarm of the pseudo-"delivered" stares down at us from the pinnacle of their salvation! Their conscience is clear—do they not claim to locate themselves above their actions? An intolerable swindle.

El paraíso no era un lugar soportable, de lo contrario, el primero hombre se habría adaptado a él; este mundo tampoco lo es, ya que en él se añora el paraíso o se da otro por seguro. ¿Qué hacer? ¿A dónde ir? No hagamos nada, no vayamos a ningún lado, así sin más.

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

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.

For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

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

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.

Word - that invisible dagger.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.