Quotes by E. M. Cioran

E. M. Cioran

E. M. Cioran

French-Romanian philosopher

Lived from: 1911 - 1995

Category: Philosophers Country: FlagFrance

  • The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.
  • To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer. As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being.
  • Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist - a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist - only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.

Quotes 1 till 20 of 41.

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  • Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
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  • Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.
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  • A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect.
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  • A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
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  • Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
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  • Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.
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  • Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
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  • Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent - unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it - we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.
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  • God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
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  • Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
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  • If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
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  • Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.
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  • It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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  • Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
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  • Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
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  • Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
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  • No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
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  • No one can keep his grieves in their prime; they use themselves up.
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  • One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
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  • Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist - a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist - only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.
    ― E. M. Cioran
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from E. M. Cioran?

The two most famous quotes from E. M. Cioran are:

  • "Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness."
  • "Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history."

When did E. M. Cioran live?

E. M. Cioran was born in 1911 and died in the year 1995.