Quotes from Emil M. Cioran

We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves.

To suffer is the supreme modality of taking the world seriously.

Gli uomini soffrono dell'avvenire, si precipitano nella vita, fuggono nel tempo, cercano. E niente mi fa più male dei loro occhi indagatori, vani, e tuttavia privi di vanità.

To live in solitude means to relinquish all expectations about life. The only surprise in solitude is death.

Existence might well have had some attraction before the advent of noise — let us say, before the neolithic age. When will he come, the man who can rid us of all men?

Some have misfortunes; others, obsessions. Which are worse off?

It is not misfortune but happiness—insolent happiness, it is true—which leads to rancor and sarcasm.

Wisdom? Never was any period so free of it—in other words, never was man more himself: a being refractory to wisdom.

We tell our troubles to someone only to make him suffer, to make him assume them for himself

O Satan, my Master, I give myself unto thee forever!" How I regret not remembering the name of the nun who, having written these words with a nail dipped in her own blood, deserves to figure in an anthology of prayer and concision.

Man attracts and appalls me, I love and hate him with a vehemence which condemns me to passivity.

If I followed my natural inclination, I should blow up the world. And it is because I lack the courage to follow it that, out of penitence, I try to stupefy myself with the company of those who have found peace.

An inexorable law strikes and directs societies and civilisations. When, for lack of vitality, the past collapses, clinging to it serves no purpose — and yet it is this attachment to antiquated forms of life, to lost or bad causes, that makes so touching the anathemas of a de Maistre or a Bonald. Everything seems admirable and everything is false in the utopian vision; everything is execrable and everything seems true in the observations of the reactionaries.

I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies

For at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace.

La desproporción entre la infinitud del mundo y la finitud del hombre es un serio motivo de desesperación;

Everything is unique—and insignificant.

Senza?ii de avorton—?i senza?ia unui dumnezeu—, altele n-am cunoscut. Punct ?i infinit, dimensiunile mele, modurile mele de existen??.

Sólo somos nosotros mismos por la suma de nuestros fracasos.

Universul îmi explodeaz? în creier. Febr? insuportabil?. Sunt la un pas de Haos. Elementele se dezl?nÈ›uie. P?mântul îmi fuge de sub picioare. Cine m? va reconcilia cu lucrurile? Un punct fix, caut un punct fix, È™i nu g?sesc decât incertitudine È™i noroi, È™i un delir irepresibil.

The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

El ser verdaderamente solitario no es el que ha sido abandonado por los hombres, sino el que sufre en medio de ellos, el que arrastra su desierto en las ferias y despliega sus talentos de leproso sonriente, de comediante de lo irreparable. Los grandes solitarios de antaño eran felices, no conocían el doblez, no tenían nada que ocultar: no se relacionaban más que con su propia soledad…

The salutary or awkward consequences of what he thinks matter little to the man who questions himself at hours when others are the prey of sleep.

He who hates himself is not humble.