238 Quotes by Emil M. Cioran

A little more fervor in my nihilism and I might — gainsaying everything — shake off my doubts and triumph over them. But I have only the taste of negation, not its grace.

Saintliness is a special kind of madness. While the madness of mortals exhausts itself in useless and fantastic actions, holy madness is a conscious effort towards winning everything.

I was alone in that cemetery overlooking the village when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at close range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the time-worn tombs -- between a false promise and the end of promises.

All great events have been set in motion by madmen, by mediocre madmen. Which will be true, we may be sure, of the "end of the world" itself.

In the 'Gospel According to the Egyptians,' Jesus proclaims: 'Men will be the victims of death so long as women give birth.' And he specifies: 'I am come to destroy the works of woman.'When we frequent the extreme truths of the Gnostics, we should like to go, if possible, still further, to say something never said, which petrifies or pulverizes history, something out of a cosmic Neronianism, out of a madness on the scale of matter.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

In a Gnostic work of the second century of our era, we read: 'The prayer of a melancholy man will never have the strength to rise unto God.'...Since man prays only in despondency, we may deduce that no prayer has ever reached its destination.

The more injured you are by time, the more you seek to escape it. To write a faultless page, or only a sentence, raises you above becoming and its corruptions. You transcend death by the pursuit of the indestructible in speech, in the very symbol of nullity.

What shall we tell the blind woman in Rilke's poem who lamented that 'I can no longer live with the sky upon me'? Would it comfort her if we told her we can no longer live with the earth underneath our feet?