504 Quotes by Emil Cioran

Tolerance – the function of an extinguished ardor – tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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

What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?

At this very moment, I am suffering – as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

One doesn’t live in a country, one lives in a language.