Author: Sineokov

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Philosophers’ Conceit

Once you ask yourself so-called philosophical questions and employ the inevitable jargon, you assume a superior, aggressive manner, and this in a realm where, the insoluble being de rigueur, humility should be also. This anomaly is merely apparent: the more formidable the questions you confront, the more you lose your head: ultimately you bestow upon yourself the dimensions they possess. If the pride of theologians “stinks” even more than that of the philosophers, it is because one does not concern oneself with God with impunity: one reaches the point of arrogating to oneself certain of His attributes — the worst, of course.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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this is what happens to us all when we look outside ourselves for what can exist only inside

Gogol, in hopes of a “regeneration,” journeys to Nazareth and discovers he is as bored there as “in a Russian railroad station” — this is what happens to us all when we look outside ourselves for what can exist only inside.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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we ourselves become unreal

When we discern the unreality of everything, we ourselves become unreal, we begin to survive ourselves, however powerful our vitality, however imperious our instincts. But they are no longer anything but false instincts, and false vitality.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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diabolic principle man

In what we have agreed to call “civilization,” there resides, undeniably, a diabolic principle man has become conscious of too late, when it was no longer possible to remedy it.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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the indictment of birth

Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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No one has lived so close to his skeleton as I have lived to mine

No one has lived so close to his skeleton as I have lived to mine: from which results an endless dialogue and certain truths which I manage neither to accept nor to reject.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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Virtue’s intolerance

It is easier to get on with vices than with virtues. The vices, accommodating by nature, help each other, are full of mutual indulgence, whereas the jealous virtues combat and annihilate each other, showing in everything their incompatibility and their intolerance.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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Time, some new humiliation

Time, fertile in resources, more inventive and more charitable then we think, possesses a remarkable capacity to help us out, to afford us at any hour of the day some new humiliation.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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the passion for being unproductive

For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.

— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born