Emile M. Cioran
Emile M. Cioran
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 April 1911
CountryRomania
anxiety elegance skepticism
Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.
exclamation-marks ideas skulls
All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.
flames fire people
All people see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?
silence speech pay
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
philosophy ideas anxiety
Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.
dream fists language
I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.
drama heart age
Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.
democracy paradise offers
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
quests vulgar deceived
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
country language
We inhabit a language rather than a country.
meeting-someone someday humans
We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.
daggers invisible
Word - that invisible dagger.
ideas people obsession
A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
inspire sacred glory
Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.