Quotes from Emile M. Cioran

There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

Man started out on the wrong foot. The misadventure in paradise was the first consequence. The rest had to follow.

A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime.

The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.

What do you do from morning to night?" "I endure myself.

I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night.

To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.

What 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.

Philosophy is a corrective against sadness. Yet there still are people who believe in the profundity of philosophy!

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

I don't understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.