Emil M. Cioran: Trending quotes (page 21)

“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.”

“Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.”

“Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.”

“To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally…”

“Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego… Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world?”

“No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; — for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.”

“Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.”

“Having destroyed all my connections, burned my bridges, I should feel a certain freedom, and in fact I do. One so intense I am afraid to rejoice in it.”

“All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.”

“It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life, but what else is there to say?”

“Who does not believe in Fate proves that he has not lived.”

“I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.”

“There is an innate anxiety which supplants in us both knowledge and intuition.”

“Objection to scientific knowledge: this world doesn't deserve to be known.”

“To hope is to contradict the future.”

“The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from life. One dreams of a Catalogue of Disappointments which would include all the disillusionments reserved for each and every one of us, to be posted in the schools.”

“Truths begin by a conflict with the police — and end by calling them in.”

“Incredible that the prospect of having a biographer has made no one renounce having a life.”

“Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that…”