Emil Cioran > Quotes

“Aphorisms are also momentary truths. They're not decrees. And I could tell you in nearly every case why I wrote this or that phrase, and when. It's always set in motion by an encounter, an incident, a fit of temper, but they all have a cause.”
― Emil Cioran

“The frightened man - victim of an exaggerated subjectivity - believes himself to be, much more than the rest of his kind, the target of hostile events.
He encounters the brave man in this error, for the brave man, at the antipodes, sees only invulnerability everywhere. Both have attained the extremity of a self-infatuated consciousness: everything conspires against the one; to the other, everything is favourable.”
― Emil Cioran

“Without the idea of suicide, I would have killed myself for sure. What kept me alive was the fact that I always had this escape door. In fact, without the idea of suicide, I could not have endured life. For me, the idea of suicide is related to the idea of freedom. With this idea, I could bear anything.”
― Emil Cioran

“Seuls les états anormaux sont fécondes. Voilà pourquoi il faut aimer la destruction, la mort, l'effondrement ou la maladie.”
― Emil Cioran

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”
― Emil Cioran