Quotes By Emile M. Cioran

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

To act is to anchor in an imminent future, so imminent it becomes almost tangible; to act is to feel you are consubstantial with that future.

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

Under each formula lies a corpse.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.