E. M. Cioran Quotes
What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.
What a pity that 'nothingness' has been devalued by an abuse of it made by philosophers unworthy of it!
Maniacs of Procreation, bipeds with devalued faces, we have lost all appeal for each other.
I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.
The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity… Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore.
Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.
Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job.
As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.
If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.
All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.
An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.
That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.
The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.
Nu pot fi eu insumi decat daca ma inalt pana la furie sau cobor pana la descurajare: la nivelul meu obisnuit, ignor faptul ca exist.
Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life.
The sense that everything is going wrong has existed in every era, and rightly so since men have found no greater pleasure than in inventing new ways to make each other miserable.
Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone.
We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job...
What they ask you for is actions, proofs, works, and all you can produce are transformed tears.
Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.
The contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.
Only god has the privilege of abandoning us. Men can only drop us
Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice.
If each of us were to confess his most secret desire the one that inspires all his plans all his actions he would say: "I want to be praised."
An individual dies ... when instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being he cowers within and takes refuge there.
