Emil M. Cioran: Trending quotes (page 3)

“In order to conceive, and to steep ourselves in, unreality, we must have it constantly present to our minds. The day we feel it, see it, everything becomes unreal, except that unreality which alone makes existence tolerable.”

“Man is fulfilled only when he ceases to be man.”

“After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?”

“We define only out of despair, we must have a formula… to give a facade to the void.”

“To act is to anchor in the imminent future.”

“If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.”

“Long before physics or psychology were born, pain disintegrated matter, and affliction the soul.”

“…all of the philosophers put together are not worth a single saint.”

“When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve.”

“If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.”

“Of all that makes us suffer, nothing — so much as disappointment — gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.”

“Of all calumnies the worst is the one which attacks our indolence, which contests its authenticity.”

“The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer.”

“By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.”

“Even more than in a poem, it is the aphorism that the word is god.”

“To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.”

“As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.”

“I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.”

“All morning, I did nothing but repeat: "Man is an abyss, man is an abyss." - I could not, alas, find anything better.”