Emile M. Cioran
Emile M. Cioran
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 April 1911
CountryRomania
suffering events moments
At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.
insomnia light diversity
Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.
night insomnia tunes
What strangely enchanted tunes gush forth during those sleepless nights!
sleep animal insomnia
The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.
crazy should prove-it
Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
spiritual pride erosion
For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.
tolerance function young
Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.
law tyrants republic
In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
cutting martyr havens
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
prove
Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.
philosophy enemy enough
It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy.
deserve-more temptation demand
Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.
home existence exile
Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?
men saint fascination
If a man has not, by the time he is thirty, yielded to the fascination of every form of extremism—I don't know whether he is to be admired or scorned, regarded as a saint or a corpse.