238 Quotes by Emil M. Cioran

Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil.

If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plenitude?

When we think of the Berlin salons in the Romantic period, of the role played in them by a Henrietta Herz or a Rachel Levin, of the friendship between the latter and Crown Prince Louis-Ferdinand; and when we then think that if such women had lived in this century they would have died in some gas chamber, we cannot help considering the belief in progress as the falsest and stupidest of superstitions.

We should have been excused from lugging a body: the burden of the self is enough.

Cine şi-a văzut figura în ipostaza grotescă nu se va putea uita niciodată, fiindcă se va teme totdeauna de el însuşi. Disperarea este urmată de o nelinişte extrem de chinuitoare. Şi ce face acest grotesc altceva decît să actualizeze şi să intensifice teama şi neliniştea?

No autocrat wields a power comparable to that enjoyed by a poor devil planning to kill himself.

To live in solitude means to relinquish all expectations about life. The only surprise in solitude is death.

The more we frequent men, the blacker our thoughts; and when, to clarify them, we return to our solitude, we find there the shadow they have cast.

The cynicism of utter solitude is a calvary relieved by insolence.