Emil Cioran quotes - page 5

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech. (Emil Cioran)
Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim. View quote
Emil Cioran
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone. View quote
Emil Cioran
I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide... View quote
Emil Cioran
...all of the philosophers put together are not worth a single saint. View quote
Emil Cioran
Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles? View quote
Emil Cioran
Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world. View quote
Emil Cioran
Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth... View quote
Emil Cioran
I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope. View quote
Emil Cioran
Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone. View quote
Emil Cioran
Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach. (Emil Cioran)
I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world? View quote
Emil Cioran
At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning. View quote
Emil Cioran
Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures. View quote
Emil Cioran
The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others. View quote
Emil Cioran
This world was created from God's fear of solitude. In other words, us, the creatures, have no other meaning but to distract the Creator. Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we live dramas for the boredom of a spectator, whose claps have never reached the ears of a mortal. View quote
Emil Cioran
To tell the truth, I couldn't care less about the relativity of knowledge, simply because the world does not deserve to be known. View quote
Emil Cioran
Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are. View quote
Emil Cioran
Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' -That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities. View quote
Emil Cioran
All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments. View quote
Emil Cioran
To win the guilty kiss of a saint, I'd welcome the plague as a blessing. (Emil Cioran)
It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us. View quote
Emil Cioran
Objection to scientific knowledge: this world doesn't deserve to be known. View quote
Emil Cioran
Since it is difficult to approve the reasons people invoke, each time we leave one of our 'fellow men', the question which comes to mind is invariably the same: how does he keep from killing himself? View quote
Emil Cioran
The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue. View quote
Emil Cioran