Emil Cioran Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Emil Cioran quotes, Emil Cioran sayings, and Emil Cioran proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent --unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it --we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude. Emil Cioran
The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility. Emil Cioran
Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture. Emil Cioran
A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate. Emil Cioran
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil. Emil Cioran
Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods. Emil Cioran
Tears do not burn except in solitude. Emil Cioran
Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Emil Cioran
Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind. Emil Cioran
Tears do not burn except in solitude. Emil Cioran
Humanity adores only those who cause it to perish. Emil Cioran
A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession. Emil Cioran
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves. Emil Cioran
Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls. Emil Cioran
When you know yourself well and do not despise yourself utterly, it is because you are too exhausted to indulge in extreme feelings. Emil Cioran
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness. Emil Cioran
Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart. Emil Cioran
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth. Emil Cioran
Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion. Emil Cioran
True knowledge comes down to vigils in the darkness: the sum of our insomnias alone distinguishes us from the animals and from our kind. What rich or strange idea was ever the work of a sleeper? Emil Cioran
The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal that cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot. Emil Cioran
Sleep is forgetfulness: life’s drama, its complications and obsessions vanish completely, and every awakening is a new beginning, a new hope. Life thus maintains a pleasant discontinuity, the illusions of permanent regeneration. Insomnia, on the other hand, gives birth to a feeling of irrevocable sadness, despair, and agony. The healthy man – the animal – only dabbles in insomnia: he knows nothing of those who would give a kingdom for an hour of unconscious sleep, those as terrified by the sight of a bed as they would be of a torture rack. Emil Cioran
But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. Emil Cioran
We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune. Emil Cioran