Emile M. Cioran

To defy heredity is to defy billions of years, to defy the first cell

— Emile M. Cioran

Vague a l'ame — melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

— Emile M. Cioran

Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.

— Emile M. Cioran

You cannot protect your solitude if you cannot make yourself odious.

— Emile M. Cioran

The amount of chiaroscuro an idea harbors is the only index of its profundity.

— Emile M. Cioran

If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without…

— Emile M. Cioran

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin…

— Emile M. Cioran

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our own corruption, we exude our…

— Emile M. Cioran

To possess a high degree of consciousness, to be always aware of yourself in relation to the world, to live in the…

— Emile M. Cioran

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it…

— Emile M. Cioran

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

— Emile M. Cioran

An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.

— Emile M. Cioran

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because…

— Emile M. Cioran

Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.

— Emile M. Cioran

The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.

— Emile M. Cioran

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

— Emile M. Cioran

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

— Emile M. Cioran

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other

— Emile M. Cioran

To devastate by language, to blow up the word and with it the world.

— Emile M. Cioran

The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.

— Emile M. Cioran

Humanity adores only those who cause it to perish.

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

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

— Emile M. Cioran

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

— Emile M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

— Emile M. Cioran

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

— Emile M. Cioran

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

— Emile M. Cioran

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

— Emile M. Cioran

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

— Emile M. Cioran