Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995)
Romanian writer, noted for his somber works in the French language; known in French as Émile Cioran.
Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.
What is not heartrendering is superfluous, at least in music.
Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!
The surest means of not losing your mind on the spot: remembering that everything is unreal, and will remain so...
Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.
He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.
Existence might be justified if each of us behaved as if he were the last man alive.
We change ideas like neckties.
To live... in any sense of the word... is to reject others; to accept them, one must renounce oneself, do oneself violence.
Thought is as much a lie as love or faith.
What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.
Truths begin by a conflict with the police — and end by calling them in.
Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.
In order to reach compassion, you must carry self-concern to the saturation point, to nausea, such paraoxysms of disgust being a symptom of health, a necessary condition for looking beyond one's own trials and tribulations.
The more you are a victim of contradictory impulses, the less you know which to yield to. To lack character - precisely that and nothing more.
We inhabit a language rather than a country.
We had nothing to say to one another, and while I was manufacturing my phrases I felt that earth was falling through space and that I was falling with it at a speed that made me dizzy.
As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.