Emile M. Cioran
Emile M. Cioran
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 April 1911
CountryRomania
suicide suicidal men
The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.
father being-a-father crime
To have committed every crime but that of being a father.
voice solitude infinity
The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity… Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore.
philosophy saws belief
I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.
solitude doing-nothing waste
Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.
ideas taught spirituality
Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.
death sweet pain
Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!
power suffering appetite
Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
pain limits pessimistic
The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.
book design causes
A book has to dig through the wounds, more, it has cause a new one, a book it has to be dangerous.
indifference pathology
Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
people doe facts
Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.
atheism ghost holy
"The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad.
prayer communication inward
True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.