“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)

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Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

Related quotes

“There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret. We hope for the future, and then we turn to the past, and then we begin slowly and desperately to hope for the past! The two most violent and abiding feelings, hope and regret, both lean upon nothing. To ask, to ask, to have not! Humanity is exactly the same thing as poverty. Happiness has not the time to live; we have not really the time to profit by what we are. Happiness, that thing which never is — and which yet, for one day, is no longer!

“Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

“It's the invention of: work. What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean: It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and because you're awake. From here on in, from this point forward, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you've solved so that today's okay. You have a lot of problems coming up. No matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve all the problems. All you're going to do from here on in is be terrified of the future. That's the price of waking up. It's the end of paradise, and that's the beginning of history.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

“Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Freedom and Death (1956)
Context: God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!

“You see… it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely-personal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilites swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before my mind's eye. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights which they had achieved, were the friends which could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.