Quotes from Emil M. Cioran

Se non si ha dentro di sé la passione dell'insolubile, non è possibile immaginare gli eccessi di cui è capace la negazione, l'impietosa lucidità della negazione.

Ces idées qui survolent l'espace, et qui, tout à coup, se heurtent aux parois du crâne...

We cannot do without the notion of progress, yet it does not deserve our attention. It is like the 'meaning' of life. Life must have one. But is there any which does not turn out, upon examination, to be ludicrous?

Un popor nu se poate compromite decât prin pruden??.

Because to exist is to evaluate, to emit judgments, and because abstention, when it is not the effect of apathy or cowardice, requires an effort no one manages to make.

Quando non si hanno più illusioni su di sè, non se ne conservano sugli altri.

If only I could reach the level of the man I would have liked to be! But some power, increasing year by year, draws me down.

Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel—three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything.

Un popor exist? întrucât constituie o primejdie.

Istoria este o explica?ie, dar nu o scuz?.

Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation.

România e geografie, nu e istorie. ÎnÈ›elege cineva acest tragic?

To be something – unconditional – is always a form of madness from which life – flower of fixed ideas – frees itself only to fade.

Life is the privilege of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life's normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life.

Lumea nu este o justificare a lui Dumnezeu, istoria îns?, este una a omului.

To will, in the fullest sense of the word, is to be unaware that one wills, is to refuse to loiter over the phenomenon of the will. The man of action weighs neither his impulses nor his motives, still less does he consult his reflexes: he obeys them without reflecting upon them, without hampering them.

Apart from a few examples of exhaustive melancholy, and a few unequalled suicides, men are merely puppets stuffed with red globules in order to beget history and its grimaces.

Her insan?n içinde bir peygamber uyuklar ve o uyand???nda, dünyadaki kötülük biraz daha artar...

When we see someone again after many years, we should sit down facing each other and say nothing for hours, so that by means of silence our consternation can relish itself.

According to Meister Eckhart, divinity precedes God, being His essence, his unfathomable depth. What should we find at man's inmost core which defines his substance in opposition to the divine essence? Neurasthenia – which is to man what divinity is to God.

The abundance of solutions to the aspects of existence is equalled only by their futility.

In paradise, objects and beings, assaulted by light from all sides, cast no shadow. Which is to say that they lack reality, like anything that is unbroached by darkness and deserted by death.

Nescience is the basis of everything, it creates everything by an action repeated every moment, it produces this and any world, since it continually takes for real what in fact is not. Nescience is the tremendous mistake that serves as the basis of all our truths, it is older and more powerful than all the gods combined.

O espetáculo do homem - que vomitivo! O amor - um encontro de duas salivas... Todos os sentimentos extraem seu absoluto da miséria das glândulas. Não há nobreza senão na negação da existência, em um sorriso que domina paisagens aniquiladas.