Emil Cioran

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

Born in a prison, with burdens on our shoulders and our thoughts, we could not reach the end of a single day if the possibilities of ending it all did not incite us to begin the next day all over again.

But, braggart demons, we postpone our end: how could we renounce the display of our freedom, the show of our pride?

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

Since it is difficult to approve the reasons people invoke, each time we leave one of our 'fellow men', the question which comes to mind is invariably the same: how does he keep from killing himself?

Espousing the melancholy of ancient symbols, I would have freed myself.

No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" — we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.

Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun.

The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour.