Quotes from Emil M. Cioran

If you are doomed to devour yourself, nothing can keep you from it: a trifle will impel you as much as a tragedy. Resign yourself to erosion at all times: your fate wills it so.

We all believe in many more things than we think, we harbour intolerances, we cherish bloody prejudices, and, defending our ideas with extreme means, we travel the world like ambulatory and irrefragable fortresses. Each of us is a supreme dogma to himself; no theology protects its god as we protect our self; and if we assail this self with doubts and call it into question, we do so only be a pseudo-elegance of our pride: the case is already won.

I believe speech to be a recent invention, and find it hard to imagine a dialogue that dates back beyond ten thousand years. And even harder, a dialogue that will occur in not ten thousand but even a thousand years from now.

In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.

Naprzeciwko czÅ'owieka abstrakcyjnego, który myÅ›li dla przyjemnoÅ›ci myÅ›lenia, staje czÅ'owiek organiczny, myÅ›lÄ…cy pod naciskiem ?yciowej nierównowagi, znajdujÄ…cy siÄ™ poza dziedzinami nauki i sztuki. Podoba mi siÄ™ myÅ›lenie zachowujÄ…ce jeszcze woÅ" krwi i ciaÅ'a; od pustej abstrakcji tysiÄ…c razy wolÄ™ refleksjÄ™ wybÅ'yskujÄ…cÄ… z pÅ'ciowego roznamiÄ™tnienia lub z nerwowej depresji.

If only we could return to those ages when no utterance shackled existence, to the laconism of interjections, to the joyous stupor of the pre- verbal!

You're against everything that's been done since the last war," said the very up-to-date lady. "You've got the wrong date: I'm against everything that's been done since Adam.

A patrimony all our own: the hours when we have nothing... It is they that form us, that individualize us, that make us dissimilar.

I fail to witness the gods' hilarity at leaving behind the human episode.

Deep inside, each man feels — and believes — himself to be immortal, even if he knows he will perish the next moment. We can understand everything, admit everything, realize everything, except our death, even when we ponder it unremittingly and even when we are resigned to it.

A privilege to live in conflict with one's times. At every moment one is aware one does not think like the others. This state of acute dissimilarity, however indigent or sterile it appears, nonetheless possesses a philosophical status which one would be at a loss to seek in cogitations attuned to events.

Getting up with my head full of plans, I would be working, I was sure of it, all morning long. No sooner had I sat down at my desk than the odious, vile, and persuasive refrain: "What do you expect of this world?" stopped me short. And I returned, as usual, to my bed with the hope of finding some answer, of going back to sleep.

Uno debe ponerse del lado de los oprimidos en cualquier circunstancia, incluso cuando están equivocados, sin perder de vista, no obstante, que están hechos del mismo barro que sus opresores.

Nie sÄ…d? nikogo, nim nie postawisz siÄ™ na jego miejscu." To stare powiedzonko z góry wyklucza wszelki osÄ…d, skoro przecie? osÄ…dzamy kogoÅ› wÅ'aÅ›nie dlatego, ?e nie mo?emy postawi? siÄ™ na jego miejscu.

After the Spanish publication of the 'Précis,' two Andalusian students asked me if it was possible to live without "fundamentación." I answered that it was true that I had found no solid basis anywhere and that I had nonetheless managed to endure, for with the years one got used to everything, even vertigo. Then, too, one does not constantly keep watch and interrogate oneself, absolute lucidity being incompatible with breathing.

Powodem, dla którego kiepscy poeci stajÄ… siÄ™ jeszcze gorsi, jest to, ?e czytujÄ… wyÅ'Ä…cznie innych poetów (tak jak marni filozofowie czytajÄ… tylko filozofów), podczas gdy o wiele wiÄ™kszy po?ytek wyciÄ…gnÄ™liby z jakieÅ› ksi??ki o botanice czy geologii. Wzbogacamy siÄ™ jedynie, obcujÄ…c z dyscyplinami odlegÅ'ymi od wÅ'asnej. Tyczy siÄ™ to zresztÄ…, co oczywiste, tylko dziedzin w których panoszy siÄ™ Ja.

In Marx's entire oeuvre, I don't think there is a single disinterested reflection on death... I was pondering this at his grave in Highgate.

In a Gnostic work of the second century of our era, we read: 'The prayer of a melancholy man will never have the strength to rise unto God.'...Since man prays only in despondency, we may deduce that no prayer has ever reached its destination.

When we have exhausted the pretexts which incite us to gaiety or melancholy, we come to the point of experiencing either one in a pure state: which is how we join the mad ...

No autocrat wields a power comparable to that enjoyed by a poor devil planning to kill himself.

The evolving absolute, Hegel's heresy, has become our dogma, our tragic orthodoxy, the philosophy of our reflexes.

Nothing is worse than the coarseness and meanness we perpetrate out of timidity.

An existence constantly transfigured by failure.

Toplum - bir kurtar?c?lar cehennemi! Diogenes'in elinde lambas?yla arad???, ilgisiz biriydi.