Emil M. Cioran: Nothing

Emil M. Cioran was Romanian philosopher and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on nothing.
Emil M. Cioran: 1062 quotes388 likes

“Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.”

Emil M. Cioran

Tears and Saints (1937)

“There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.”

Emil M. Cioran

The New Gods (1969)

“The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?”

Emil M. Cioran

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history — greater than the fall of empires — I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”

Emil M. Cioran

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“To accomplish nothing and die of the strain”

Emil M. Cioran

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Variant: To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked.

“Dead of night. No one, nothing but the society of the moments. Each pretends to keep us company, then escapes — desertion after desertion.”

Emil M. Cioran

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after an autopsy, is less than a corpse.”

Emil M. Cioran

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“We are fulfilled only when we aspire to nothing, when we are impregnated by that nothing to the point of intoxication.”

Emil M. Cioran

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”

Emil M. Cioran

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

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

Emil M. Cioran

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

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

Emil M. Cioran

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“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.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Even when nothing happens, everything seems too much for me. What can be said, then, in the presence of an event, any event?”

Emil M. Cioran

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“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.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing.”

Emil M. Cioran

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)