Emil M. Cioran: Quotes about the world

Emil M. Cioran was Romanian philosopher and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on world.

Emil M. Cioran: 1062 quotes388 likes

“The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.”

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“"Neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness are for the being abandoned to doubt." - This point in the Gita is my death sentence.”

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“One of the biggest paradoxes of our world: memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.”

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“This world was created from God's fear of solitude. In other words, us, the creatures, have no other meaning but to distract the Creator. Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we live dramas for the boredom of a spectator, whose claps have never reached the ears of a mortal.”

Tears and Saints (1937)

“We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life. We are reluctant, of course, to treat birth as a scourge: has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good — have we not been told that the worst came at the end, not at the outset of our lives? Yet evil, the real evil, is behind, not ahead of us. What escaped Jesus did not escape Buddha: "If three things did not exist in the world, O disciples, the Perfect One would not appear in the world. …" And ahead of old age and death he places the fact of birth, source of every infirmity, every disaster.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.”

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.”

The Temptation to Exist (1956)

“It is difficult, it is impossible to believe that the Good Lord—“Our Father”—had a hand in the scandal of creation. Everything suggests that He took no part in it, that it proceeds from a god without scruples, a feculent god. Goodness does not create, lacking imagination; it takes imagination to put together a world, however botched. At the very least, there must be a mixture of good and evil in order to produce an action or a work.”

The New Gods (1969)

“We suffer: the external world begins to exist...; we suffer to excess: it vanishes. Pain instigates the world only to unmask its unreality.”

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and aesthetic ideals? It's all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don't know, and we don't really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.”

Tears and Saints (1937)

“Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“Religion comforts us for the defeat of our will to power. It adds new worlds to ours, and thus brings us hope of new conquests and new victories. We are converted to religion out of fear of suffocating within the narrow confines of this world.”

Tears and Saints (1937)

“By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness.... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory.... Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)
Variant: By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory... Let “desire” be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

“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?”

The Book of Delusions (1936)

“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.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“One hardly saves a world without ruling it.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

“I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)