Quotes by Emil Cioran

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God: a disease we think we don't have because nobody dies of it these days.

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What gains expression loses its intensity and thus becomes bearable.

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Everyone, from garbage collectors to snobs, just exudes sinful generosity, everyone shares recipes for happiness, everyone wants to follow in the footsteps of others: this makes social life unbearable, but it makes us even more unbearable for ourselves: if someone does not interfere in other people's affairs, his own his affairs fill him with so much restlessness that his religion will become his own, if he does not turn against it like a crooked apostle: we are all victims of the universal game.

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The passion for preaching comes from a person so deep that even the instinct of self-preservation cannot see it. Everyone is waiting for when the clock finally strikes for him, when he can come up with something, be it anything. You can hear your word: you don't need more than that. We pay dearly for being neither deaf nor dumb.

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I once had a "me"; but now I am a mere object... stuffing myself with the drugs of loneliness; for the world offered me none strong enough to make me forget it. And once I have killed the prophet that lies dormant in me, what else would I have to earn among people?

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The sight of the man makes me nauseous! Love - the meeting of two slimes. Every emotion derives its absolute from the misery of the glands. Don't look for nobility, only in the denial of existence, only in the smile floating above the obliterated landscapes.

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God: a perpendicular fall to our own terror, a salvation that strikes like lightning into the world of a person who is searching but not deceived by hope, the immediate erasure of our disconsolate and deliberately inconsolable pride, the relegation of the individual to a side track, a soul doomed to inactivity due to lack of restlessness.

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In the role of the creator of values, man lives completely in self-absorption: he falls prey to the belief that something exists, even though if he just holds his breath: everything stops; if you suspend your emotions: nothing vibrates; if you suppress your whims: everything becomes monochromatic.

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Boredom is only the beginning of this journey... it makes us feel that time is too long and unable to project any kind of end goal.

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In the long line of creatures, man is the only one who evokes unrelenting disgust. An animal can only be repulsive for a while; it does not start to ferment in our brains, while our neighbors haunt us in our thinking and are integrated into the mechanism of our separation from the world to confirm the system of our rejections and belonging nowhere.

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We only cross each other's paths in order to sink deeper and deeper together in our pursuit of nothingness: in the exchanges of ideas, confessions and intrigues.

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One should only listen to oneself.

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Everyone was born with a dose of purity that was destined to be polluted by social contact, this crime against human solitude. We would even do the impossible not to dedicate ourselves to ourselves. Far from doom, our neighbor represents the temptation to fall. Not being able to keep our hands clean and our hearts uncorrupted, we soil ourselves with foreign sweats, and because we thirst for the disgusting and like the stench, we wallow in the mire of public outcry. When we dream of seas that have become holy water, it is too late to dip into them, our too deep corruption does not allow us to swim in them: our loneliness has been overwhelmed by the world; the traces left in us by others are indelible.

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After a person has already realized with a shocking and easily recalled insight his own aimlessness, it is incomprehensible to him that others are not even capable of this. Extinguishing yourself seems so obvious and simple! So why is it so rare, why does everyone miss it? Because reason rejects the will to live in vain, the power of nothing to prolong actions exceeds that of all absolutes; this explains the tacit covenant of mortals against death; this nothingness is not a mere symbol of existence, it is existence itself; that's all. And this nothing - this everything - although it is unable to give meaning to life, it nevertheless forces it to persist in the state it is in: the absence of suicide.

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Among the goals set for existence, if we look at them, which one is not suitable for a farce or a morgue?

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Everyone should die in Hungarian - or reject death.

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Life can only be endured thanks to sleep and forgetting: man is too weak to endure twenty-four hours of sobriety.

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The philosophy is too unbearable, and this is its biggest shortcoming. It lacks pathos, alcohol, and love. What is an artist? A man who knows everything - but does not realize it. What about the philosopher? A man who lives with awareness but knows nothing.

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There are nights after which we should change our names, we have become so different.

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I feel like I'm free, but I know I'm not.

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In my bouts of optimism, I say to myself that my life has been hell: my hell is hell to my taste.

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- I will pray for you. - Thank you. But who will listen?

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The peculiarity of pain is that it is not ashamed to repeat itself.

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Love consists in combining the temperament of a vampire with the patience of a doe.

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The great and only originality of love is that the lover cannot distinguish happiness from unhappiness.

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Love is a contract between two people to overestimate each other.

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Don't write to say something, but because you have something to say.

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Beware of thinkers whose minds only function when they are filled with quotations.

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All is not lost as long as we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

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My feeling of life: I am at the bottom of a hell where every moment is a miracle.

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The only thing I aspired to do here on earth was to be indifferent to both life and death. Failed.

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A madman who speaks is less frightening than one who does not speak.

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Culture is just fireworks against the background of nothingness.

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What does it matter if I live, or if I die, or that - but that's it. There are no more options. What a modest selection!

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We can earn money only at the price of our honor.

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Everything is an appearance - but an appearance of what? Semmy's.

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At a certain moment in its history, every nation believes itself to be the chosen one. That's when he delivers his best and his worst.

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The essence often emerges at the end of long conversations. We say the big truths on the threshold.

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If someone has nothing to say, he becomes a literary critic, if he has even less to say, he is a critic of critics. Sterility to the second power.

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We should get used to the idea that we have nothing to gain by living, but neither by dying. Based on this certainty, we could advantageously organize our existence.

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Nothing is as intense as the hatred of an elder. Anger does not decrease with age, on the contrary, it increases.

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I will write on my door: Every visit is aggression. Or: Have mercy! Do not enter! Or: Every face bothers me. Or: I'm never at home. Or: Curse the one who rings the bell. Or: I don't know anyone. Or: Dangerous madman.

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The day I didn't suffer, I didn't live.

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I don't think there is a more complete pleasure than trampling underfoot what we once adored.

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We write a book for the whole world except our friends. In their eyes, this book is a poisoned gift, and they are happy about it with a grimace.

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Envy is the most natural and at the same time the most universal feeling: even saints envy each other.

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A religion ends when it no longer breeds heresies.

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Suicide: Let's die before we die.

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The truest self-confession is what we do indirectly, talking about others.

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There comes a moment in life when we no longer imitate anyone but ourselves.

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If you want to be happy, don't search your memories!

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A translation, if it is clearer and more understandable than the original, is bad. This proves that the translator could not preserve the ambiguity of the original and decided - which is also a sin.

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The real hell? If we could forget nothing.

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At the bottom of all our disgust lies self-loathing.

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Until I was thirty years old, I was occupied with only one thought: the extermination of the old; now that I'm over fifty, I'm interested in exterminating the young.

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You should never agree with the crowd, even when they are right.

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We will never forgive anyone for disappointing them: we will be angry with them until the day we die.

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We call death only when we are more or less healthy; as soon as we get even a little sick, we immediately start to dread it.

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A megalomaniac is someone who says out loud what everyone else is silently thinking.

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We call someone our old friend when we realize that we have nothing left to say to each other.

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I think I would be the worst psychiatrist imaginable if I didn't understand all my patients and give them the truth.

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Every person who seeks praise or at least recognition is proof that he is not arrogant enough.

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Today I woke up with a desire for revenge. I just don't know who to take revenge on.

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Every belief is an obstacle to freedom.

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When someone talks about an elite, I know I'm dealing with a cretin.

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A true writer sacrifices everything for his work, including his honor.