Quotes by Emil Cioran

About Emil Cioran:

Emil Michel Cioran was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. Cioran was born in R??inari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His first French book, A Short History of Decay, was awarded the prestigious Rivarol Prize in 1950. It was the only book for which he accepted an award given to him, claiming that it would have been insolent of him to refuse it. The Latin Quarter of Paris was his permanent residence and he lived much of his life in isolation with his partner Simone Boué.
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Croire qu’il lui appartient de dépasser sa condition et de s’orienter vers celle de surhomme, c’est oublier qu’il a du mal à tenir le coup en tant qu’homme, et qu’il n’y parvient qu’à force de tendre sa volonté, son ressort, au ma...

Emil Cioran

the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.

Emil Cioran

Život nije otporan na veliku temperaturu. Zbog toga sam došao do zaključka da najuznemireniji ljudi, sa unutrašnjim dinamizmom dovedeni do paroksizma, koji ne mogu prihvatiti uobičajenu temperaturu, moraju propasti. To je aspekt životnog demoni...

Emil Cioran

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

Emil Cioran

Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

Emil Cioran

Sînt oameni cărora le este dat să guste numai otrava din lucruri, pentru care orice surpriză este o surpriză dureroasă și orice experiență un nou prilej de tortură. Dacă se va spune că această suferință își are motive subiective, ți...

Emil Cioran

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

Emil Cioran

I hate wise men because they are lazy, cowardly, and prudent. To the philosophers' equanimity, which makes them indifferent to both pleasure and pain, I prefer devouring passions. The sage knows neither the tragedy of passion, nor the fear of death, ...

Emil Cioran

Só é saudável em nós aquilo pelo que não somos especificamente nós mesmos: são nossas aversões que nos individualizam; nossas tristezas que nos concedem um nome; nossas perdas que nos fazem possuidores de nosso eu. Só somos nós mesmos pela ...

Emil Cioran

¿El arte de amar ? Saber unir el temperamento de un vampiro y la discreción de una anémona.

Emil Cioran

Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.

Emil Cioran

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

Emil Cioran

En un mundo sin melancolía, los ruiseñores se pondrían a eructar.

Emil Cioran

The Real gives me asthma.

Emil Cioran

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 neighbou...

Emil Cioran

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter i...

Emil Cioran

But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the...

Emil Cioran

Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. Destruction awaits anyone who, answering to his vocation and fulfilling it, exerts himself within history; only the man who sa...

Emil Cioran

We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my specula...

Emil Cioran

I have recommended you the dignity of skepticism: yet here I am, prowling around the Absolute. Technique of contradiction? Remember, rather, what Flaubert said: "I am a mystic and I believe in nothing".

Emil Cioran

Author Bio

  • NameEmil Cioran
  • DescriptionRomanian philosopher and essayist
  • BornApril 8, 1911
  • DiedJune 20, 1995
  • CountryRomania
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Author