Quotes from Emil M. Cioran

A little more fervor in my nihilism and I might — gainsaying everything — shake off my doubts and triumph over them. But I have only the taste of negation, not its grace.

Hegel is chiefly responsible for modern optimism. How could he have failed to see that consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses?

Never judge a man without putting yourself in his place." This old proverb makes all judgment impossible, for we judge someone only because, in fact, we cannot put ourselves in his place.

In permitting man, Nature has committed much more than a mistake in her calculations: a crime against herself.

The problem of responsibility would have a meaning only if we had been consulted before our birth and had consented to be precisely who we are.

Everything that can be classified is perishable. Only what is susceptible to several interpretations endures.

I was alone in that cemetery overlooking the village when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at close range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the time-worn tombs -- between a false promise and the end of promises.

There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.

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

Only normal that man should no longer be interested in religion but in religions, for only through them will he be in a position to understand the many versions of his spiritual collapse.

Children turn, and must turn, against their parents, and the parents can do nothing about it, for they are subject to a law which decrees the relations among all the living: i.e., that each engenders his own enemy.

The more you live, the less useful it seems to have lived.

In the 'Gospel According to the Egyptians,' Jesus proclaims: 'Men will be the victims of death so long as women give birth.' And he specifies: 'I am come to destroy the works of woman.' When we frequent the extreme truths of the Gnostics, we should like to go, if possible, still further, to say something never said, which petrifies or pulverizes history, something out of a cosmic Neronianism, out of a madness on the scale of matter.

My mission Is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

I shall never utterly admire anyone except a man dishonored — and happy. There is a man, I should say, who defies the opinion of his fellows and who finds consolation and happiness in himself alone.

Only to the degree that our moments afford us some contact with death do we have some chance to glimpse on what insanity all existence is based.

Suntem un popor prea bun, prea cumsecade È™i prea aÈ™ezat. Nu pot iubi decât o Românie în delir.

If there is so much discomfort and ambiguity in lucidity, it is because lucidity is the result of the poor use to which we have put our sleepless nights.

In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left — ignorant how to react — with a foolish grin.

When I happen to be busy, I never give a moment's thought to the "meaning" of anything, particularly of whatever it is I am doing. A proof that the secret of everything is in action and not in abstention, that fatal cause of consciousness.

We must side with the oppressed on every occasion, even when they are in the wrong, though without losing sight of the fact that they are molded of the same clay as their oppressors.

It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did — without a word — what they do, we would take them for robots. By speaking, they deceive themselves, as they deceive others: because they say what they are going to do, who could suspect they are not masters of their actions?

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

güzellik, tomurcuklar?n içinde ÅŸiÅŸinen ölümden baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸildir