Quotes from Emil M. Cioran

There are hearts into which even God cannot look without losing his innocence.

get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression.

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

When we think of the Berlin salons in the Romantic period, of the role played in them by a Henrietta Herz or a Rachel Levin, of the friendship between the latter and Crown Prince Louis-Ferdinand; and when we then think that if such women had lived in this century they would have died in some gas chamber, we cannot help considering the belief in progress as the falsest and stupidest of superstitions.

For all we tell ourselves about not outliving a stillborn babe, instead of clearing out at the first opportunity, we cling, with lunatic energy, to one day more.

When I think of all the agonies on this earth, I know there are souls which could not be lifted by cohorts of angels, so heavy they will not be able to rise at the Last Judgement, frozen in the barenness of their own curses. Only light souls can be saved: those whose weight will not break the wings of angels.

Paganism is the deepening of appearances, while saintliness is the sickness of depths.

Nothing more abominable than the critic and, a fortiori, the philosopher in each of us: if I were a poet, I should behave like Dylan Thomas, who, when people would discuss his poems in his presence, would drop to the floor in a fit of convulsions.

We know, we feel that everything has been said, that there is nothing left to say. But we feel less that this truth affords language a strange, even unsettling status which redeems it. Words are ultimately saved because they have ceased living.

He who is lucid, understands himself, explains himself, justifies himself, and masters his acts will never execute a memorable action. Psychology is the hero's tomb.

We pursue whatever we pursue out of torment -- a need for torment. Our very quest for salvation is a torment, the subtlest, the best camouflaged of all.

Since we remember clearly only our ordeals, it is ultimately the sick, the persecuted, the victims in every realm who will have lived to the best advantage. The others - the lucky ones - have a life, of course, but not the memory of life.

I have tried to be faithful to my knowledge, to force my instincts to yield, and realized that it is no use wielding the weapons of nothingness if you cannot turn them against yourself.

In a metropolis as in a hamlet, what we still love best is to watch the fall of one of our kind.

Celui qui, entre vingt et trente ans, ne souscrit pas au fanatisme, à la fureur, et à la démence est un imbécile. On n'est libéral que par fatigue, démocrate par raison. Le malheur est le fait des jeunes. Ce sont eux qui promeuvent les doctrines d'intolérance et les mettent en pratique ; ce sont eux qui ont besoin de sang, de cris, de tumulte, et de barbarie.

The most effective way to avoid dejection, motivated or gratuitous, is to take a dictionary, preferably of a language you scarcely know, and to look up word after word in it, making sure they are the kind you will never use.

patíbulos, calabouços e masmorras só prosperam à sombra de uma fé - dessa necessidade de crer que infestou o espírito para sempre. O diabo empalidece comparado a quem dispõe de uma verdade, de sua verdade.

There is no such thing as a perfect vacuum in history. That unheard-of absence to which we are reduced, and which I have the pleasure and the misfortune to reveal to you, you would be mistaken to imagine merely a blank, uninscribed; for in it I discern—presentiment or hallucination?—a kind of expectation of other gods. Which ones? No one can say. All I know, and it is what everyone knows, is that a situation like ours cannot be endured indefinitely.

Ne regarde ni en avant ni en arrière, regarde en toi-même, sans peur ni regret. Nul ne descend en soi tant qu'il demeure esclave du passé ou de l'avenir.

Secondo me l'atto di scrivere è proprio questo, dico sul serio: un atto di immensa solitudine. Lo scrittore non ha senso se non in queste condizioni. Quello che fai dopo è prostituzione. Ma non appena accetti di esistere, devi accettare la prostituzione. Per me chiunque non si suicidi è in qualche modo uno che si prostituisce.

I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point

There are tears which pierce through the earth and rise as stars in other skies. I wonder who has wept our stars?

La scienza è l'elusione della saggezza in nome della conoscenza del mondo.

Les héros homériques vivaient et mouraient; les snobs de l'Occident discutaient du plaisir et de la douler.