Ashraqat Dawood

“We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is linked to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.”
― Emil Cioran

“the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.”
― Émile Michel Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky