Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995)
Romanian writer, noted for his somber works in the French language; known in French as Émile Cioran.
Nothing is a better proof of how far humanity has regressed than the impossibility of finding a single nation, a single tribe, among whom birth still provokes mourning and lamentations.
Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.
To create: only someone mistaken about himself, someone ignorant of the secret motives behind his actions, creates. Once the creator is transparent to himself, he no longer creates. Self-knowledge antagonizes the demon. Here is where we must seek out the reason Socrates wrote nothing.
That we can be wounded by the very people we despise discredits pride.
We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
When you love someone, you hope - the more closely to be attached - that a catastrophe will strike your beloved.