Emile M. Cioran
Emile M. Cioran
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 April 1911
CountryRomania
criticism critics misconception
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
giving flaws crime
Transmitting one's flaws [through procreation] to someone else is a crime. I could never consent to give life to someone who would inherent my ailments.
sleep men evil
In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.
hate men animal
Afflicted with existence, each man endures like an animal the consequences which proceed from it. Thus, in a world where everything is detestable, hatred becomes huger than the world and, having transcended its object, cancels itself out.
stupid miracle disease
Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.
risk individual hurling
An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.
two fiction
Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.
optimistic rose vision
Utopia is the grotesque en rose, the need to associate happiness -- that is, the improbable -- with becoming, and to coerce an optimistic, aerial vision to the point where it rejoins its own source: the very cynicism it sought to combat. In short, a monstrous fantasy.
world madness utopia
Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.
eye broken puppets
I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.
men ideas grudge
The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.
ideas lows fallen
A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.
prayer men civilized
I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.
forgiving world betrayed
I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.