Emil Cioran

“A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.”

“Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.”

“Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.”

“In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.”

“The Universal view melts things into a blur.”

“What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.”

“I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.”

“We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.”

“To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.”

“Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.”

“The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.”

“Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.”

“Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.”

“Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.”

“The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.”

“Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.”

“Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.”

“What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?”

“Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.”

“We inhabit a language rather than a country.”