Emil Cioran: Citations en anglais (Page 5)

“Between the demand to be clear, and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.”

“We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.”

“We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.”

“Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.”

“Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.”

“We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job…”

“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this and I do not. Everything is unique — and insignificant.”

“The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness […] One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.”

“How I wish I didn't know anything about myself and this world!”

“No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.”

“We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.”

“Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.”

“I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.”

“We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.”

“To accomplish nothing and die of the strain”

“To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!”

“Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.”

“I have always struggled, with the sole intention of ceasing to struggle. Result: zero.”

“A great step forward was made the day men understood that in order to torment one another more efficiently they would have to gather together, to organize themselves into a society”