E. M. Cioran
Quotes by E. M. Cioran
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Boredom dismantles the mind, renders it superficial, out at the seams, saps it from within and dislocates it.
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If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.
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There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.
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Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.
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We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.
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What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
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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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No human beings are 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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The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.
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The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.
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What necessity impels a writer who has produced fifty books to write still one more? Why this proliferation, this fear of being forgotten, this debased coquetry?
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There is no way of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.
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It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
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Every form of talent involves a certain shameless-ness.
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To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?
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The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.
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