504 Quotes by Emil Cioran

That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.

Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

All people see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?

Vague a l’ame – melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

On Creating – What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.

Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.