E.M. Cioran

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory.

No one could survive the instantaneous comprehension of universal grief, each heart being stirred only for a certain quantity of sufferings

“If a man loves nothing, he will be invulnerable” (Chuang Tse)

We can never ponder enough Kirilov’s description of Stavrogin: “When he believes, he doesn’t believe he believes; and when he doesn’t believe, he doesn’t believe he doesn’t believe.”

The only minds which seduce us are the minds which have destroyed themselves trying to give their lives a meaning.

However grave its consequences may have been, the rejection of Christianity remains the Jews’ finest exploit, a no which does them honor.

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet, Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland — and no other.

“God has created nothing more odious to Himself than this world, and from the day He created it. He has not glanced at it again, so much does He loathe it.” The Moslem mystic who wrote that, I don’t know who it was, I shall never know this friend’s name.

Each time the future seems conceivable to me, I have the impression of having been visited by Grace.