Quotes

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Particle is not the word

Why fear the nothing in store for us when it is no different from the nothing which preceded us: this argument of the Ancients against the fear of death is unacceptable as consolation. Before, we had the luck not to exist; now we exist, and it is this particle of existence, hence of misfortune, which dreads death. Particle is not the word, since each of us prefers himself to the universe, at any rate considers himself equal to it.

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

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If you are doomed to devour yourself

If you are doomed to devour yourself, nothing can keep you from it: a trifle will impel you as much as a tragedy. Resign yourself to erosion at all times: your fate wills it so.

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

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“We no longer dream”

In a remote province in India, everything was explained by dreams, and what is more important, dreams were used to cure diseases as well. It was according to dreams that business was conducted and matters of life and death decided. Until the English came. Since then, one native said, “We no longer dream.”

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

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the chain of admiration

We cannot forgive those we have praised to the skies, we are impatient to break with them, to snap the most delicate chain of all: the chain of admiration . . . , not out of insolence, but out of aspiration to find our bearings, to be free, to be . . . ourselves. Which we manage only by an act of injustice.

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

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my taedium vitae

The energy and virulence of my taedium vitae continue to astound me. So much vigor in a disease so decrepit! To this paradox I owe my present incapacity to choose my final hour.

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

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each engenders his own enemy

Children turn, and must turn, against their parents, and the parents can do nothing about it, for they are subject to a law which decrees the relations among all the living: i.e., that each engenders his own enemy.

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

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Nothing condemns us more than our incapacity to shout our good luck

No one exclaims he is feeling well and that he is free, yet this is what all who know this double blessing should do. Nothing condemns us more than our incapacity to shout our good luck.

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

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no prayer has ever reached its destination

In a Gnostic work of the second century of our era, we read: “The prayer of a melancholy man will never have the strength to rise unto God.” . . . Since man prays only in despondency, we may deduce that no prayer has ever reached its destination.

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

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dying is immoral

Say what we will, death is the best thing nature has found to please everyone. With each of us, everything vanishes, everything stops forever. What an advantage, what an abuse! Without the least effort on our part, we own the universe, we drag it into our own disappearance. No doubt about it, dying is immoral. . . .

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

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the sum of all the things which were refused us

The substance of a work is the impossible — what we have not been able to attain, what could not be given to us: the sum of all the things which were refused us.

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