Quotes from book
The Trouble With Being Born

Emil M. CioranOriginal title De l'inconvénient d'être né (French)
Emil M. Cioran photo

“At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“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.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“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?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“It is trifling to believe in what you do or in what others do. You should avoid simulacra and even "realities"; you should take up a position external to everything and everyone, drive off or grind down your appetites, live, according to a Hindu adage, with as few desires as a "solitary elephant.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left…with a foolish grin.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act."”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

And they do calm down.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Emil M. Cioran photo

“"Do I look like someone who has something to do here on Earth?" - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Emil M. Cioran photo

“We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented — we're born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt — tone is more than talent, it is its essence.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions — only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“The real, the unique misfortune: to see the light of day. A disaster which dates back to aggressiveness, to the seed of expansion and rage within origins, to the tendency to the worst which first shook them up.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)