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

Dead of night. No one, nothing but the society of the moments. Each pretends to keep us company, then escapes — desertion after desertion.

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

The more you are a victim of contradictory impulses, the less you know which to yield to. To lack character — precisely that and nothing more.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

If to describe a misery were as easy to live through it!

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

History and Utopia (1960)

We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. — Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.

The New Gods (1969)

Awareness of time: assault on time . . .

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.

The New Gods (1969)

Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“Meeting, after several years, someone we used to know as a child, the first glance almost always suggests that some great disaster must have befallen him” Leopardi, quoted by cioran.

The New Gods (1969)

Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.

A Short History of Decay (1949)

I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass — which is better than trying to fill them.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Having destroyed all my connections, burned my bridges, I should feel a certain freedom, and in fact I do. One so intense I am afraid to rejoice in it.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

I pride myself on my capacity to perceive the transitory character of everything. An odd gift which has spoiled all my joys; better: all my sensations.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

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