Quotes By Emile M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.

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

Sperm is a bandit in its pure state.

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

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.

God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

To act is to anchor in an imminent future, so imminent it becomes almost tangible; to act is to feel you are consubstantial with that future.

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

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

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

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?

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.