The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Emil M. Cioran

The contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.

Animal banished from life, man’s condition is tragic, for he no longer finds fulfillment in life’s simple values. For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.

cioran, human, questioning-life

As far back as I can remember, I’ve utterly destroyed within myself the pride of being human. And I saunter to the periphery of the Race like a timorous monster, lacking the energy to claim kinship with some other band of apes.

all-gall-is-divided, cioran, human

Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

Only the mediocre want to die of old age. Suffer, then, drink pleasure to its last dregs, cry or laugh, scream in despair or with joy, sing about death or love, for nothing will endure! Morality can only make life a long series of missed opportunities.

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

chaos, cities, hate, riots

That there should be a reality hidden behind appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope.

cioran, hidden-reality, language

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland – and no other.

country, language, philosophy

What they ask you for is actions, proofs, works, and all you can produce are transformed tears.

action, tears, work

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

cioran, suicide

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

death, dying, life, pain, philosophy, sacrifice, suicide

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

obsession, suicide