Emil Cioran Quotes

1911–1995 France

Emil Cioran (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist whose work is known for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, which frequently engages with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism.

France
Academics
Educators
Essayists
Philosophers

Also known as: Cioran, Cioran, Emile, E. M. Cioran, Emile Cioran

Random Emil Cioran quote

487 quotes

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

To resign oneself or to blow out one's brains, that is the choice one faces at certain moments. In any case, the only real dignity is that of exclusion.

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

No one commits suicide for external reasons, only because of inner disequilibrium. Under similar adverse circumstances, some are indifferent, some are moved, some are driven to suicide.

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Read day and night, devour books — these sleeping pills — not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.

Tears and Saints (1937)

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if ever there was one. Yet it is with the hope of being cured of it some day that we accept life and endure its ordeals. The years pass, the wound remains.

The Fall into Time (1964)

I have no ideas, only obsessions. Anybody can have ideas. Ideas have never caused anybody’s downfall.

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Obviously God was a solution, and obviously none so satisfactory that will ever be found again.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

History and Utopia (1960)

Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth . . .

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

There is always someone above you: beyond God Himself rises Nothingness.

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

You have dreamed of setting the world ablaze, and you have not even managed to communicate your fire to words, to light up a single one!

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Emil Cioran (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.