Quotes By Emile M. Cioran

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

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

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

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

The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.

The Universal view melts things into a blur.

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.