“For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.”

— Emil M. Cioran , book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

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