Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995)
Romanian writer, noted for his somber works in the French language; known in French as Émile Cioran.
If I were to go blind, what would bother me the most would be no longer to be able to stare idiotically at the passing clouds.
To found a family. I think it would have been easier for me to found an empire.
All morning, I did nothing but repeat: "Man is an abyss, man is an abyss." - I could not, alas, find anything better.
Jealousy — that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.
Self-knowledge - the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?
Every action flatters the hyena within us.
By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.
Maniacs of Procreation, bipeds with devalued faces, we have lost all appeal for each other.
Obviously God was a solution, and obviously none so satisfactory that will ever be found again.
As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.
If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?
An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.
The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer.
Two enemies - the same man divided.
Devouring biographies one after the next to be convinced of the futility of any undertaking, of any destiny.
Late at night. I feel like falling into a frenzy, doing some unprecedented thing to release myself, but I don't see against whom, against what...
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.
What anxiety when one is not sure of one's doubts or wonders: are these actually doubts?
Within the pessimist an ineffectual kindness connives with an unsatiated malice.