374 Quotes by Emile M. Cioran

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

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

To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

There was a time when time did not yet exist.

We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job...

Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact they never have.