{ "type": "topic", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism", "heading": "Quotes about nihilism", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism.md", "quotes_count": 18, "authors_count": 9, "parent": { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy", "heading": "Quotes about philosophy" }, "children": [], "quotes": [ { "id": "332f5e14-2918-4c86-92b6-b20d4fe1d2e4", "slug": "i-am-a-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olive-schreiner/the-story-of-an-african-farm/i-am-a-man", "text": "“I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale of humanity [...]”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Olive Schreiner", "slug": "olive-schreiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olive-schreiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Story of an African Farm", "slug": "the-story-of-an-african-farm", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olive-schreiner/the-story-of-an-african-farm" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olive_Schreiner#The_Story_of_an_African_Farm_(1883)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:50" }, { "id": "4f0bff68-bafe-457d-b693-a9d84dc79ed1", "slug": "there-is-a-point", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/there-is-a-point", "text": "There is a point to love, if love itself is remembered. There is a point to the creation of beauty, because beauty will endure. All words, all thoughts, have a chance of transcending death and time. There is no heaven or hell, no afterlife, no divine creator, no great will behind the universe, no meaning beyond that revealed by our senses and our intellects. This is a hard thing to accept. Yet there is still a point to being alive, and that makes the acceptance bearable. But the universe withholds even this bleak consolation. Within its deepest structure, written like a curse into the very mathematics out of which it is forged, the universe contains a suicidal imperative. Vacuum itself is poised in an unstable condition. Given time—and the one certainty is that there will always be time—the vacuum instability will tip the universe into a new state of being. In that instant of uncreation, all information encoded in the present universe will be erased. No memory of anything will endure. No single experience of any living organism will be preserved. Nothing learned or discovered or made will survive. No art, no science, no history, no deed, no kindness, no fond thought, not a single moment of human happiness. Nothing will last. Nothing will matter. Nothing has ever mattered.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Poseidon's Wake", "slug": "poseidons-wake", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 528, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "meaning of life", "slug": "meaning-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/meaning-of-life" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Poseidon's_Wake_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:43" }, { "id": "1f0be5fd-5436-40d5-82c5-06e5e67aee68", "slug": "what-could-be-colder", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/what-could-be-colder", "text": "“What could be colder than being made to feel the utter futility of existence? To know that not only is there no meaning to anything, but there never can be? That life itself is completely devoid of purpose? That nothing will be remembered? That despite our grandest efforts our boldest endeavours, nothing can or will ever be preserved? That the kindest acts are doomed to be forgotten, along with the cruelest? All loves, all hates erased from the record? Yes, what could be worse than that?” “You tell me.” “Nothing. Nothing at all in the whole of creation. And if death troubles me—which, I am pleased to say, it most certainly does—then the idea of not even being remembered, not even leaving the tiniest quantum ripple in the wake of the coming vacuum fluctuation…well, that is a great deal more than troubling. We live by our deeds, whether we are machines or people or elephants. And if our deeds are meaningless and forgotten what does that make us?” “Nothing,” Kanu answered, fiercely enough that he spoke the word aloud. “Pointless interactions between matter and energy, doomed to be erased. That’s the message, Swift. That there’s no meaning. That we don’t matter.” “No,” Swift answered with corresponding force. “We do matter. This truth does not rob us of meaning—it gives it back to us. It liberates us from the burden of posterity, from the burden of deluding ourselves that our acts have some chance of outlasting eternity. If we are kind to each other now, it’s not because we are hoping to be remembered well, to be lauded in some great accounting of things. It’s not because we want to be rewarded for our behaviour, or to be admired for the wonderful things we did during our brief span of existence. Exactly the opposite! Now that we know there is no chance of that, our deeds have no higher meaning than the context of the moment in which they occur. One decent deed, one kind gesture, enacted without thought of recompense or remembrance, performed in the full and certain knowledge that it will be forgotten, that it cannot be otherwise—that single deed refutes the entire message of the M-builders. They were wrong! There is no Terror, only enlightenment! Only liberation! And we will continue to refute their message with every gracious act, every decent thought, every human kindness—until the moment the vacuum rips.” “Just a fancy speech, Swift. That’s all it is.” “More than a speech, Kanu. A viable moral strategy for negating the M-builders’ nihilism. It’s a choice. A question of free will. Do you choose it, or reject it?”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Poseidon's Wake", "slug": "poseidons-wake", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 599, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "kindness", "slug": "kindness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/kindness" }, { "name": "meaning of life", "slug": "meaning-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/meaning-of-life" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Poseidon's_Wake_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:43" }, { "id": "87bf4695-7cff-400f-a86a-64ad09e96bc9", "slug": "nihilism-then-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-a-bell/the-cultural-contradictions-of-capitalism/nihilism-then-is-the", "text": "Nihilism, then, is the end process of rationalism. It is man's self conscious will to destroy his past and control his future. It is modernity at its extreme.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Daniel A. Bell", "slug": "daniel-a-bell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-a-bell" }, "book": { "title": "The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism", "slug": "the-cultural-contradictions-of-capitalism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-a-bell/the-cultural-contradictions-of-capitalism" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 4, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Bell#The_Cultural_Contradictions_of_Capitalism_(1976)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:13" }, { "id": "c399152b-f43e-4724-b160-8b4fae585273", "slug": "i-understood-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-understood-that", "text": "\"I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Gardner", "slug": "john-gardner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner" }, "book": { "title": "Grendel", "slug": "grendel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "loneliness", "slug": "loneliness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loneliness" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grendel#Chapter_Two", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:23" }, { "id": "ce2c4363-c68d-4ce9-8d51-f884f82d8f79", "slug": "one-of-my-teachers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted/one-of-my-teachers", "text": "One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Susanna Kaysen", "slug": "susanna-kaysen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen" }, "book": { "title": "Girl, Interrupted", "slug": "girl-interrupted", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susanna_Kaysen#Girl,_Interrupted_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:17" }, { "id": "d853ba8b-f5cb-49eb-b920-73c2303eebff", "slug": "nihilism-is-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cornel-west/race-matters/nihilism-is-not", "text": "Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one’s soul. (p19)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Cornel West", "slug": "cornel-west", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cornel-west" }, "book": { "title": "Race Matters", "slug": "race-matters", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cornel-west/race-matters" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cornel_West#Race_Matters_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:01" }, { "id": "0416117d-f011-455d-8f2d-52f21537e8fd", "slug": "this-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-dragon-in-the-sword/this-is-the", "text": "“This is the stuff which some Nazis wished to put into our churches,” whispered von Bek. “Pagan objects of worship which they claim are the symbols of a true German religion. They are almost as anti-Christian as they are anti-Semitic. It is as if they hate every system of thought which in any way questions their own mish-mash of pseudo-philosophy and mystical claptrap!” He stared at the altar in disgust. “They are the worst kind of nihilists. They cannot even see that they destroy everything and create nothing. Their invention is as empty as any inventions of Chaos I have seen. It has no true history, no concrete substance, no depth, no quality of intellect. It is merely a negation, a brutal denial of all Germany’s virtues.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Moorcock", "slug": "michael-moorcock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock" }, "book": { "title": "The Dragon in the Sword", "slug": "the-dragon-in-the-sword", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-dragon-in-the-sword" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 637, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock#The_Dragon_in_the_Sword_(1986)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:39" }, { "id": "97cd7164-7a7a-4712-82db-4281dcf3c945", "slug": "and-is-adventure", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-runestaff/and-is-adventure", "text": "“And is adventure and sensation all we should seek, Meliadus?” “Aye—why not? All is chaos, there is no meaning to existence, there is only one advantage to living one’s life and that is to discover all the sensations the human mind and body is capable of feeling.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Moorcock", "slug": "michael-moorcock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock" }, "book": { "title": "The Runestaff", "slug": "the-runestaff", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-runestaff" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 428, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock#The_Runestaff_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:35" }, { "id": "2f69e94b-d7a6-4563-b7c5-cd0e3d07ac4f", "slug": "when-you-know", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born/when-you-know", "text": "When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "The Trouble With Being Born", "slug": "the-trouble-with-being-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reality", "slug": "reality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reality" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#The_Trouble_With_Being_Born_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:42" }, { "id": "276a9ad4-db3d-47be-821b-f9cab8796706", "slug": "nothing-deserves-to-be-undone", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born/nothing-deserves-to-be-undone", "text": "Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "The Trouble With Being Born", "slug": "the-trouble-with-being-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#The_Trouble_With_Being_Born_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:42" }, { "id": "d158f550-5a41-4512-9b0a-71c3c5582f00", "slug": "i-am-for", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born/i-am-for", "text": "I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis, consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "The Trouble With Being Born", "slug": "the-trouble-with-being-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "stubbornness", "slug": "stubbornness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/stubbornness" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#The_Trouble_With_Being_Born_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:41" }, { "id": "788dd969-0bf0-4c8b-8fff-593e9ceb51bf", "slug": "i-have-never", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born/i-have-never", "text": "I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "The Trouble With Being Born", "slug": "the-trouble-with-being-born", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/the-trouble-with-being-born" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#The_Trouble_With_Being_Born_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:41" }, { "id": "a6656446-bc07-4f0f-a1e3-aa12a5a0811a", "slug": "nothing-proves-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay/nothing-proves-that", "text": "Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "A Short History of Decay", "slug": "a-short-history-of-decay", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" }, { "name": "existence", "slug": "existence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/existence" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#A_Short_History_of_Decay_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:40" }, { "id": "34e46495-674c-47e6-a865-63882ce43c9e", "slug": "to-repeat-to-yourself", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay/to-repeat-to-yourself", "text": "To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "A Short History of Decay", "slug": "a-short-history-of-decay", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#A_Short_History_of_Decay_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:40" }, { "id": "bdb080d5-c0d2-4613-8308-fe9090833a2e", "slug": "the-notion-of-nothingness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay/the-notion-of-nothingness", "text": "The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Emil Cioran", "slug": "emil-cioran", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran" }, "book": { "title": "A Short History of Decay", "slug": "a-short-history-of-decay", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "hope", "slug": "hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope" }, { "name": "nihilism", "slug": "nihilism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nihilism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran#A_Short_History_of_Decay_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:39" }, { "id": "a90caf7a-ddd7-4754-a082-843a9f88278e", "slug": "by-capitulating-to-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/emil-cioran/a-short-history-of-decay/by-capitulating-to-life", "text": "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. 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