Quotes from Emile M. Cioran

God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.

History proves nothing because it contains everything.

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

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

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

Humanity adores only those who cause it to perish.

Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.

What is pity but the vice of kindness.

Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

Basis of society: anonymous sweat.

The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.