However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.


Emil Cioran

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Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.
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I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosoph...
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I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sit...
EMIL CIORAN
Injustice constitutes the essence of social life.
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The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothing...
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One should live and die where one was born... I've been bored everywhere I went. What was the po...
EMIL CIORAN
We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficienc...
EMIL M. CIORAN
I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
It has been a long time since philosophers have read men’s souls. It is not their task, we are tol...
EMIL M. CIORAN
We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Magnificat de Bach. Remué jusqu'aux larmes. Il est impossible que ce qui s'y exprime n'ait q...
EMIL M. CIORAN
As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.
EMIL M. CIORAN
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, prec...
EMIL M. CIORAN
By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Our only choice is between irrespirable truths and salutary frauds.
EMIL M. CIORAN
The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first momen...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.
EMIL M. CIORAN
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Tristetea, ca si suferinta, ne revela existenta, deoarece în ele avem în constiinta separatia noas...
EMIL M. CIORAN
If you try to convert someone, it will never be to
effect his salvation but to make him suffer ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.
EMIL M. CIORAN
It is no sign of benediction to have been obsessed with the lives of saints, for it is an obsession ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
I have no ideas, only obsessions. Anybody can have ideas. Ideas have never caused anybody's downfall...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Word — That invisible dagger.
EMIL M. CIORAN
My soul is chaos, how can it be at all? There is everything in me: search and you will find out. I a...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference an...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Les mystiques et leurs «  œuvres  complètes ». Quand on s'adresse à Dieu, et à Dieu seul, co...
EMIL M. CIORAN
A book is a suicide postponed.
EMIL M. CIORAN
True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire w...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Dans les époques de stérilité, on devrait hiberner, dormir jour et nuit pour conserver ses forces...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.
EMIL M. CIORAN
By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Since it is difficult to approve the reasons people invoke, each time we leave one of our 'fellow me...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Niciodată nu te voi trăda de tot, deşi te-am trădat şi te voi trăda la fiecare pas; Când te-a...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Sînt unii oameni atît de prosti, ca de le-ar aparea vreo idee la suprafata creierului ea s-ar sinu...
EMIL M. CIORAN
In numele si sub teroarea ei (plictiselii, n.m.) parasesc oamenii caminul si moartea agreabila legat...
EMIL M. CIORAN
S'il n'avait gardé une dernière illusion, je me réclamerais volontiers d'Omar Khayyam, de ses tri...
EMIL M. CIORAN
To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without man...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, havin...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Só é saudável em nós aquilo pelo que não somos especificamente nós mesmos: são nossas aversõ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Of all that was attempted this side of nothingness, is anything more pathetic than this world, excep...
EMIL M. CIORAN
My soul is chaos, how can it be at all? There is everything in me: search and you will find out ... ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it. EMIL M. CIORAN Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist—a demo...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Eu nu am idei ci obsesii. Idei poate avea oricine. Nimeni nu s-a prăbușit din cauza ideilor.
EMIL M. CIORAN
أشعر أنني منفصل تماما عن كل البلدان وعن كل المجموعات. أ�...
EMIL M. CIORAN
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live-moreover, the only one.
EMIL M. CIORAN
Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me...
EMIL M. CIORAN
Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.
EMIL M. CIORAN
ثمة راهب وجزار يتشاجران داخل كل رغبة.
EMIL M. CIORAN
At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, i...
EMIL M. CIORAN
When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You ...
EMIL M. CIORAN
En sí misma, toda idea es neutra o debería serlo; pero el hombre la anima, proyecta en ella sus ll...
CIORAN
Todos los hombres tienen que destruir su vida. Y según la manera como lo hagan se llamarán triunfa...
CIORAN
The eminent cleric was poking fun at original sin. ‘That sin is your meal ticket. Without it, you�...
CIORAN
You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don&...
EMIL ZATOPEK
Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.
EMIL NOLDE
To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that mea...
EMIL ZATOPEK
It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.
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The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as...
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O Lord, let thyself be found with a good gift to everyone who needs it, that the happy may find cour...
EMIL BRUNNER
It is characteristic of the thinking of our time that the problem of guilt and forgiveness has been ...
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This autonomy of man, this attempt of the Ego to understand itself out of itself, is the lie concern...
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Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 Since becoming a disciple of Christ, Pa...
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Feast of Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton, Archbishop of Mainz, Apostle of Germany, Martyr, 754 T...
EMIL BRUNNER
Commemoration of Samuel & Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 & 1936 Evil can be interpret...
EMIL BRUNNER
Commemoration of Clement, Bishop of Rome, Martyr, c.100 Thanksgiving (U.S.) Eternal life is not...
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In quite recent times we seem to have entered a particularly dangerous new phase of anthropological ...
EMIL BRUNNER
By giving to Jesus Christ, the Man who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, this historical personali...
EMIL BRUNNER
Commemoration of Douglas Downes, Founder of the Society of Saint Francis, 1957 For the Platonic o...
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The Revelation of God is not a book or a doctrine, but a living Person.
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Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624 Utopias of historical progress cannot sedu...
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So long as we stand "under the Law", we cannot perceive this hidden unity of all the commandments. I...
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Debate is the death of conversation.
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The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relati...
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One who receives this Word, and by it salvation, receives along with it the duty of passing this Wor...
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Love does not inquire into the character of the recipient but it asks what he needs. It does not lov...
EMIL BRUNNER
Hope is the power that gives us the power to step out and try.
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Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strang...
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A runner must run with dreams in his heart, not money in his pocket.
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If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.
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If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a prob...
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Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.
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This is closest we'll ever be. This is our escape. Our secret closet, our letter of invitation to Ho...
EMIL OSTROVSKI
What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives ...
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The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, l...
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One day the factory sports coach, who was very strict, pointed at four boys, including me, and order...
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There is a great advantage in training under unfavorable conditions. It is better to train under bad...
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Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religi...
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The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, l...
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You can't plan on hitting the ball soft. He threw it soft, so I hit it soft. They were catching the ...
EMIL BROWN
You can't climb to the second floor without a ladder. Try for a goal that's reasonable, then gradual...
EMIL ZATOPEK
An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in hi...
EMIL ZATOPEK
Just make sure your intentions are not pretensions
EMIL LUDWIG
When [he] kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe..and the moment is eter...
EMIL LUDWIG
If you want to run, then run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon.
EMIL ZATOPEK
I am Nurmi! I am Nurmi!
EMIL ZATOPEK
Either will do an excellent job of leading the ticket in November. We believe we have a great opport...
EMIL RUNGE
The candidates are opposed to this and have said so. This is not being done in conjunction with the ...
EMIL RUNGE
Such an outcome could cause a misstatement of the net worth of the acquiring credit union and we ver...
EMIL HENRY
Our point here is that what we don't want is for people to walk away and say, well, those are yester...
EMIL HENRY
We are focused on doing what is right for the taxpayer. While many of the issues in the report are i...
EMIL HENRY
We're very comfortable with it.
EMIL HENRY
It's not a simple matter of increasing the clock frequency because doing so has all sorts of downstr...
EMIL GIRCZYC
What until recently seemed to be only the apocalyptic fantasies of the Christian faith has today ent...
EMIL BRUNNER
What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life
EMIL BRUNNER
I value it. You never take it for granted.
EMIL BROWN
I'm not going to say I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm not even thinking about last year. I can't wa...
EMIL BROWN
If I lost my case, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. Winning it worked out for me. I've got ...
EMIL BROWN
I'd never call it a laugher but it's a lot easier on the pitchers,
EMIL BROWN
That was no fly ball, that was a line drive, ... I knew I had no chance to catch that ball. Did you ...
EMIL BROWN
Yeah, because I didn't have to be on the bases today, ... I [messed] up enough.
EMIL BROWN
I don't know how many we've lost in a row. I'm trying to forget about it.
EMIL BROWN
We got some hits off him early. I wouldn't say he was a hittable pitcher. He didn't look ordinary.
EMIL BROWN
The athlete of today is not an athlete alone. He's the center of a team - doctors, scientists, c...
EMIL ZATOPEK
Men, today we die a little.
EMIL ZATOPEK
What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.
EMIL ZATOPEK
Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast.
EMIL ZATOPEK
Great is the victory, but the friendship of all is greater.
EMIL ZATOPEK
The thyroid cells take up iodine with particular avidity and are able to store it up in great quanti...
EMIL THEODOR KOCHER
In the early 1950s, during the near avalanche of discoveries, rediscoveries, and redefinitions of su...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavour ...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
We finally understand in general terms how a cell is organized, how its specialized organs function ...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
In 1973, I left the Rockefeller University to join the Yale University Medical School. The main reas...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
My father, Emil Palade, was professor of philosophy, and my mother, Constanta Cantemir-Palade, was a...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
For them to have to go back in twice, that's not good. At 77, not too many people make a good recove...
DR. EMIL POPOVIC
For them to have to go back in twice, that's not good.
DR. EMIL POPOVIC
Seldom in the history of medicine has the recognition of the most effective cure followed as swiftly...
EMIL THEODOR KOCHER
Since my high school years, I have been interested in history, especially in Roman history, a topic ...
GEORGE EMIL PALADE
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's eq...
EMILE M. CIORAN
Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
EMILE M. CIORAN
The Universal view melts things into a blur.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
E. M. CIORAN
The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.
E. M. CIORAN
If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
E. M. CIORAN
One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland --and n...
E. M. CIORAN
Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people...
E. M. CIORAN
A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its se...
E. M. CIORAN
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal ther...
E. M. CIORAN
Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
E. M. CIORAN
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals h...
E. M. CIORAN
Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations ...
E. M. CIORAN
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
E. M. CIORAN
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
E. M. CIORAN
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untain...
E. M. CIORAN
A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
E. M. CIORAN
God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
E. M. CIORAN
Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent --unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaus...
E. M. CIORAN
What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striv...
E. M. CIORAN
Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.
E. M. CIORAN
When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances,...
E. M. CIORAN
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
E. M. CIORAN
The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose atte...
E. M. CIORAN
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not fi...
E. M. CIORAN
Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ours...
E. M. CIORAN
Those who believe in their truth -- the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men -- ...
E. M. CIORAN
What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
E. M. CIORAN
Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.
E. M. CIORAN
Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist --a demo...
E. M. CIORAN
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
E. M. CIORAN
No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are ...
E. M. CIORAN
We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
E. M. CIORAN
The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, th...
E. M. CIORAN
Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than...
E. M. CIORAN
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.
E. M. CIORAN
Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
E. M. CIORAN
To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.
E. M. CIORAN
No one can keep his grieves in their prime; they use themselves up.
E. M. CIORAN
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for on...
E. M. CIORAN
Sperm is a bandit in its pure state.
E. M. CIORAN
We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone wo...
E. M. CIORAN
Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
E. M. CIORAN
Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with o...
E. M. CIORAN
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal ther...
EMILE M. CIORAN
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal the...
E. M. CIORAN
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for on...
EMILE M. CIORAN
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for on...
E. M. CIORAN
Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encount...
E. M. CIORAN
A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
EMILE M. CIORAN
The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose atte...
EMILE M. CIORAN
Our first intuitions are the true ones.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Word - that invisible dagger.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
EMILE M. CIORAN
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
EMILE M. CIORAN
No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately consci...
EMILE M. CIORAN
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal ther...
E. M. CIORAN
Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
EMILE M. CIORAN