Emile M. Cioran
We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.Collection: Alive
Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.Collection: Ideas
I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.Collection: Vanity
God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.Collection: God
The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.Collection: Men
All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.Collection: Philosophy
True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.Collection: Art
To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Suffering
There is no limit to suffering.Collection: Suffering
My enthusiasms...constitute my reserves, my unexploited resources, perhaps my future.Collection: Enthusiasm
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!Collection: Aliens
It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.Collection: Men
Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.Collection: Genius
Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others.Collection: Hurt
Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.Collection: Men
I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.Collection: Prayer
Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.Collection: Next Day
All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.Collection: Exclamation Marks