Emile M. Cioran Quotes - Page 7

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• By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our own corruption, we exude our sweat and grow winded upon the fetid air.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Crazy, Air, Sweat

  4 Copy quote

• Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Book, Writing, Dare

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

  16 Copy quote

• To act is to anchor in the imminent future.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Anchors

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  8 Copy quote

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

  Emile M. Cioran

  Ruins, Irritated, Appetite

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Revenge, Men, Order

  9 Copy quote

• We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Born, Existence, Knows

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  8 Copy quote

• The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Mind, Plies, Intimacy

  "The Temptation to Exist". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1956.

  13 Copy quote

• We derive our vitality from our store of madness.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Vitality, Madness, Stores

  10 Copy quote

• Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!

  Emile M. Cioran

  Death, Sweet, Pain

  Emile M. Cioran (1999). “All Gall is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms”, p.7, Arcade Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Ghost, Mask, Curtains

  25 Copy quote

• What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

  Emile M. Cioran

  Time, Men, Doe

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  7 Copy quote

• I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Forgiving, World, Betrayed

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

  7 Copy quote

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

  Emile M. Cioran

  Ignorance, Interesting, World

  Emile M. Cioran (1970). “The fall into time”, Crown

  5 Copy quote

• To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Effort, Cost, Able

  7 Copy quote

• A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Enemy, Gates

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  10 Copy quote

• I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Believe, Thinking, People

  "The Book of Delusions". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1936.

  8 Copy quote

• The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Borders, Kind, Misanthropy

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  51 Copy quote

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

  Emile M. Cioran

  Alive, Understood, Position

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Forever, Needs, Miserable

  "The New Gods". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1969.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Knowing, Ignorant, Suffering

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

  4 Copy quote

• We inhabit a language rather than a country.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Country, Language

  7 Copy quote

• To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Form, Delicate, Exploitation

  "Anathemas and Admirations". Book by Emil Cioran, 1987.

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• 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.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Years, Names, Numbers

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Lying, Character, Answers

  "On the Heights of Despair". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1934.

  5 Copy quote

• Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Drama, Heart, Age

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

  12 Copy quote

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