Emile M. Cioran Quotes - Page 9

To devastate by language, to blow up the word and with it the world.

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

All that shimmers on the surface of the world, all that we call interesting, is the fruit of ignorance and inebriation.

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; – for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.

As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

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.

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.

In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.

When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

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