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Jacob

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How Paris Made the Revolution and the Revolution Made Paris: From France's Royal City to Bourgeois Babylon, 1789-1889

by Jacques R. Pauwels

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(page 266 of 344)
— May 15, 2026 09:11AM

Mar 17, 2026 09:19AM

“When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.”
― Emil Cioran, History and Utopia

19 likes

“The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

tags: defensive-pessimism, disaster, endurance, pessimism, philosophy

4 likes

“Someone we regard highly comes closer to us when he performs an action unworthy of him--thereby he releases us from the cavalry of veneration. And starting from that moment we feel a true attachment to him.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

tags: idealization, pessimism, philsophy, veneration

1 likes

“We cannot do without the notion of progress, yet it does not deserve our attention. It is like the 'meaning' of life. Life must have one. But is there any which does not turn out, upon examination, to be ludicrous?”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

tags: pessimism, philosophy, progress

2 likes