504 Quotes by Emil Cioran

What music appeals to in us it is difficult to know; what we do know is that music reaches a zone so deep that madness itself cannot penetrate there.

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

Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved.

Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute.

Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

Tears do not burn except in solitude.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?