A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed. Emile M. Cioran More Quotes by Emile M. Cioran More Quotes From Emile M. Cioran The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster. Emile M. Cioran tyrantsatheismideas We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage. Emile M. Cioran provokedragedisease I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday. Emile M. Cioran believepeoplethinking What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures? Emile M. Cioran endurekindinsomnia Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived. Emile M. Cioran old-agepunishmentage What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts. Emile M. Cioran failingrealityway To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall? Emile M. Cioran writingbookfall What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on. Emile M. Cioran moving-onnamesgiving I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies. Emile M. Cioran actingmenbelieve I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison. Emile M. Cioran tragedysittingsleep Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears. Emile M. Cioran healthyreligiousmind Consider love: is there a nobler outpouring, a rapture less suspect? Its shudders rival music, compete with the tears of solitude and of ecstasy: sublime...but a sublimity inseperable from the urinary tract: transports bordering upon excretion, a heaven of the glands, sudden sancitity of the orifices. It takes no more than a moment of attention for this intoxication, shaken, to cast you back into the ordures of physiology or a moment of fatigue to recognize that so much ardor produces only a variety of mucous. Emile M. Cioran solitudelove-isheaven Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity. Emile M. Cioran empireserodemind If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God. Emile M. Cioran ifs Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity. Emile M. Cioran luciditydespairtasks Tolerance cannot seduce the young. Emile M. Cioran seducingtoleranceyoung Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile. Emile M. Cioran recallsruinsshould If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing. Emile M. Cioran knowingifsreason To hope is to contradict the future. Emile M. Cioran The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy? Emile M. Cioran melancholysuicideworld
