Emil Cioran: Citations en anglais (Page 13)

“If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?”

“Though we may prefer ourselves to the universe, we nonetheless loathe ourselves much more than we suspect. If the wise man is so rare a phenomenon, it is because he seems unshaken by the aversion which, like all beings, he must feel for himself.”

“Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.”

“When I happen to be busy, I never give a moment's thought to the "meaning" of anything, particularly of whatever it is I am doing. A proof that the secret of everything is in action and not abstention, that fatal cause of consciousness.”

“We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.”

“I find in myself as much evil as in anyone, but detesting action — mother of all vices — I am the cause of no one's suffering.”

“I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.”

“Anxiety — or the fanaticism of the worst.”

“That fear which gives birth to thoughts, and the fear of thoughts…”

“What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name — and moving on.”

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

“The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.”

“Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!”

“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.”

“We regret not having the courage to make such and such decision; we regret much more having made one — any one. Better no action than the consequences of an action.”

“Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!”

“Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.”

“If I were to go blind, what would bother me the most would be no longer to be able to stare idiotically at the passing clouds.”

“No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.”