Emile M. Cioran
Emile M. Cioran
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 April 1911
CountryRomania
aliens indifference claims
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
loneliness men suffering
The truly solitary being is not the man who is abandoned by men, but the man who suffers in their midst, who drags his desert through the marketplace and deploys his talents as a smiling leper, a mountebank of the irreparable.
music thinking giving
Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.
form delicate exploitation
To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.
disease reincarnation born
No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.
mind wish position
Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often.
matter loser one-thing
Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.
pain real suffering
Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.
sex practice needs
Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with our kind: the more we practice it, the more we become like everyone else: it is in the performance of a reputedly bestial function that we prove our status as citizens: nothing is more public than the sexual act.
flames light hatred
I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.
revenge men order
In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.
suicide ideas dies
I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.
religious healthy mind
Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.
born plans
Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.