Emil Cioran quotes - page 7

A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime. (Emil Cioran)
In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time. View quote
Emil Cioran
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice. View quote
Emil Cioran
Read day and night, devour books - these sleeping pills - not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions. View quote
Emil Cioran
Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration. View quote
Emil Cioran
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. View quote
Emil Cioran
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. View quote
Emil Cioran
Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity. View quote
Emil Cioran
Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day. View quote
Emil Cioran
An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it. View quote
Emil Cioran
For a long time-always, in fact-I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn't able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm. (Emil Cioran)
But, braggart demons, we postpone our end: how could we renounce the display of our freedom, the show of our pride? View quote
Emil Cioran
When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it. View quote
Emil Cioran
The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness. View quote
Emil Cioran
How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence. View quote
Emil Cioran
Long before physics or psychology were born, pain disintegrated matter, and affliction the soul. View quote
Emil Cioran
To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously. View quote
Emil Cioran
He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama. View quote
Emil Cioran
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation. View quote
Emil Cioran
Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. View quote
Emil Cioran
How I wish I didn't know anything about myself and this world! (Emil Cioran)
I dream of wanting - and all I want seems to me worthless. View quote
Emil Cioran
Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others. View quote
Emil Cioran
We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude.... View quote
Emil Cioran
In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety. View quote
Emil Cioran