Stephen Rowland

“In the gamut of creatures, only man inspires a sustained disgust.”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“The sages of antiquity, who put themselves to death as proof of their maturity, had created a discipline of suicide which the moderns have unlearned. Doomed to an uninspired agony, we are neither authors of our extremities nor arbiters of our adieux; the end is no longer our end: we lack the excellence of a unique initiative – by which we might ransom an insipid and talentless life, as we like the sublime cynicism, the ancient splendour of an art of dying. Habitués of despair, complacent corpses, we all outlive ourselves and die only to fulfil a futile formality. It is as if our life were attached to itself only to postpone the moment when we could get rid of it.”
― Emil M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“If one were at every moment conscious of what one knew - if, for example, the sentiment of foundationlessness were both continual and intense - one would kill oneself or allow oneself to slip into imbecility. One exits thanks to the moments when one forgets certain truths.”
― Emil Cioran

“Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation.”
― Emil M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay