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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

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I Have Tried To

Emile M. Cioran

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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.

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Afflicted With Existence, Each Man Endures Like An Animal The Consequences Which Proceed From It. Thus, In A World Where Everything Is Detestable, Hatred Becomes Huger Than The World And, Having Transcended Its Object, Cancels Itself Out.

We Inhabit A Language Rather Than A Country.

Far From Diminishing The Appetite For Power, Suffering Exasperates It.

If Each Of Us Were To Confess His Most Secret Desire, The One That Inspires All His Plans, All His Actions, He Would Say: "i Want To Be Praised."

Insomnia Is A Vertiginous Lucidity That Can Convert Paradise Itself Into A Place Of Torture.

Espousing The Melancholy Of Ancient Symbols, I Would Have Freed Myself.

Just As Ecstasy Purifies You Of The Particular And The Contingent, Leaving Nothing Except Light And Darkness, So Insomnia Kills Off The Multiplicity And Diversity Of The World, Leaving You Prey To Your Private Obsessions.

Philosophy: Impersonal Anxiety; Refuge Among Anemic Ideas.

To Act Is To Anchor In The Imminent Future.

To Hope Is To Contradict The Future.

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.

Whenever I Happen To Be In A City Of Any Size, I Marvel That Riots Do Not Break Out Everyday: Massacres, Unspeakable Carnage, A Doomsday Chaos. How Can So Many Human Beings Coexist In A Space So Confined Without Hating Each Other To Death?

Much More Than Our Other Needs And Endeavors, It Is Sexuality That Puts Us On An Even Footing With Our Kind: The More We Practice It, The More We Become Like Everyone Else: It Is In The Performance Of A Reputedly Bestial Function That We Prove Our Status As Citizens: Nothing Is More Public Than The Sexual Act.

The Truly Solitary Being Is Not The Man Who Is Abandoned By Men, But The Man Who Suffers In Their Midst, Who Drags His Desert Through The Marketplace And Deploys His Talents As A Smiling Leper, A Mountebank Of The Irreparable.

All Great Ideas Should Be Followed By An Exclamation Mark - A Warning Signal Similar To The Skull And Crossbones Drawn On High-voltage Transformers.

Exclamation Marks

Only One Thing Matters: Learning To Be The Loser.

Only Superficial Minds Approach An Idea With Delicacy.

To Exist Is A Habit I Do Not Despair Of Acquiring.

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?

History Is Nothing But A Procession Of False Absolutes, A Series Of Temples Raised To Pretexts, A Degradation Of The Mind Before The Improbable.

What A Pity That 'nothingness' Has Been Devalued By An Abuse Of It Made By Philosophers Unworthy Of It!

In A Republic, That Paradise Of Debility, The Politician Is A Petty Tyrant Who Obeys The Laws.

Think Of God And Not Religion, Of Ecstasy And Not Mysticism. The Difference Between The Theoretician Of Faith And The Believer Is As Great As Between The Psychiatrist And The Psychotic.

If We Manage To Last In Spite Of Everything, It Is Because Our Infirmities Are So Many And So Contradictory That They Cancel Each Other Out.

Woes And Wonders Of Power, That Tonic Hell, Synthesis Of Poison And Panacea.

Maniacs Of Procreation, Bipeds With Devalued Faces, We Have Lost All Appeal For Each Other.

So Long As Man Is Protected By Madness - He Functions - And Flourishes.

What Are You Waiting For In Order To Give Up?

The Universal View Melts Things Into A Blur.

No One Recovers From The Disease Of Being Born, A Deadly Wound If There Ever Was One.

When We Cannot Be Delivered From Ourselves, We Delight In Devouring Ourselves.

By Virtue Of Depression, We Recall Those Misdeeds We Buried In The Depths Of Our Memory. Depression Exhumes Our Shames.

Once You See That Everything Is Unreal, You Can't See Why You Should Bother To Prove It.

To Want Fame Is To Prefer Dying Scorned Than Forgotten.

The More One Has Suffered, The Less One Demands. To Protest Is A Sign One Has Traversed No Hell.

Paradise Was Unendurable, Otherwise The First Man Would Have Adapted To It; This World Is No Less So, Since Here We Regret Paradise Or Anticipate Another One. What To Do? Where To Go? Do Nothing And Go Nowhere, Easy Enough.

A Golden Rule: To Leave An Incomplete Image Of Oneself.

To Get Up In The Morning, Wash And Then Wait For Some Unforeseen Variety Of Dread Or Depression. I Would Give The Whole Universe And All Of Shakespeare For A Grain Of Ataraxy.

Chaos Is Rejecting All You Have Learned, Chaos Is Being Yourself.

Chaos In The World

Each Time I Fail To Think About Death, I Have The Impression Of Cheating, Of Deceiving Someone In Me.

Tragic Paradox Of Freedom: The Mediocre Men Who Alone Make Its Exercise Possible Cannot Guarantee Its Duration.

No Position Is So False As Having Understood And Still Remaining Alive.

To Possess A High Degree Of Consciousness, To Be Always Aware Of Yourself In Relation To The World, To Live In The Permanent Tension Of Knowledge, Means To Be Lost For Life.

No One Can Do Without Some Semblance Of Immortality, And Even Less Will They Deny Themselves The Right To Seek It Out In The Form Of This Or That Reputation, Starting With The Literary... Since Death Has Come To Be Accepted By All As The Absolute End, Everyone Writes.

I Do Not Forgive Myself For Being Born. It Is As If Creeping Into This World, I Had Profaned A Mystery, Betrayed Some Momentous Pledge, Committed A Fault Of Nameless Gravity.

Utopia Is The Grotesque En Rose, The Need To Associate Happiness - That Is, The Improbable - With Becoming, And To Coerce An Optimistic, Aerial Vision To The Point Where It Rejoins Its Own Source: The Very Cynicism It Sought To Combat. In Short, A Monstrous Fantasy.

Not To Be Born Is Undoubtedly The Best Plan Of All. Unfortunately, It Is Within No One's Reach.

Best Laid Plans

Boredom Dismantles The Mind, Renders It Superficial, Out At The Seams, Saps It From Within And Dislocates It.

To Have Committed Every Crime But That Of Being A Father.

The Refutation Of Suicide: Is It Not Inelegant To Abandon A World Which Has So Willingly Put Itself At The Service Of Our Melancholy?

An Individual Dies ... When, Instead Of Taking Risks And Hurling Himself Toward Being, He Cowers Within, And Takes Refuge There.

What Is That One Crucifixion Compared To The Daily Kind Any Insomniac Endures?

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.

Life Is Merely A Fracas On An Unmapped Terrain, And The Universe A Geometry Stricken With Epilepsy.

Doubt Works Deep Within You Like A Disease Or, Even More Effectively, Like A Faith.

We Are All Geniuses When We Dream.

Time Is Heavy Sometimes; Imagine How Heavy Eternity Must Be.

Hungarian Language — Savage It May Be But Of A Beauty That Has Nothing Human About It, With Sonorities Of Another Universe, Powerful And Corrosive, Appropriate To Prayer, To Groans And To Tears, Risen Out Of Hell To Perpetuate Its Accent And Its Aura…words Of Nectar And Cyanide.

After Having Struggled Madly To Solve All Problems, After Having Suffered On The Heights Of Despair, In The Supreme Hour Of Revelation, You Will Find That The Only Answer, The Only Reality, Is Silence.

The Curtain Of The Universe Is Moth-eaten, And Through Its Holes We See Nothing Now But Mask And Ghost.

Truths Begin By A Conflict With The Police - And End By Calling Them In.

Anyone Who Speaks In The Name Of Others Is Always An Impostor.

You Are Done For - A Living Dead Man - Not When You Stop Loving But Stop Hating. Hatred Preserves: In It, In Its Chemistry, Resides The Mystery Of Life.

I Do Nothing, Granted. But I See The Hours Pass - Which Is Better Than Trying To Fill Them.

The Fear Of Being Deceived Is The Vulgar Version Of The Quest For Truth.

Thinking Should Be Like Musical Meditation. Has Any Philosopher Pursued A Thought To Its Limits The Way Bach Or Beethoven Develop And Exhaust A Musical Theme? Even After Having Read The Most Profound Thinkers, One Still Feels The Need To Begin Anew. Only Music Gives Definitive Answers.

If, At The Limit, You Can Rule Without Crime, You Cannot Do So Without Injustices.

Our Works, Whatever They May Be, Derive From Our Incapacity To Kill Or To Kill Ourselves.

In Most Cases We Attach Ourselves To In Order To Take Revenge On Life, To Punish It, To Signify We Can Do Without It, That We Have Found Something Better, And We Also Attach Ourselves To God In Horror Of Men.

I Have Decided Not To Oppose Anyone Ever Again, Since I Have Noticed That I Always End By Resembling My Latest Enemy.

One Cannot Live Without Motives. I Have No Motives Left, And I Am Living.

Every Thought Should Recall The Ruin Of A Smile.

Philosophy Is A Corrective Against Sadness. Yet There Still Are People Who Believe In The Profundity Of Philosophy!

Revenge Is Not Always Sweet, Once It Is Consummated We Feel Inferior To Our Victim.

Shame On The Man Who Goes To His Grave Escorted By The Miserable Hopes That Have Kept Him Alive.

I Have Always Struggled, With The Sole Intention Of Ceasing To Struggle. Result: Zero.

To Accomplish Nothing And Die Of The Strain

Accomplish Nothing

When Every Man Has Realized That His Birth Is A Defeat, Existence, Endurable At Last, Will Seem Like The Day After A Surrender, Like The Relief And The Repose Of The Conquered.

I Am The Beast With A Contorted Grin, Contracting Down To Illusion And Dilating Toward Infinity, Both Growing And Dying, Delightfully Suspended Between Hope For Nothing And Despair Of Everything, Brought Up Among Perfumes And Poisons, Consumed With Love And Hatred, Killed By Lights And Shadows. My Symbol Is Death Of Light And The Flame Of Death. Sparks Die In Me Only To Be Reborn As Thunder And Lightning. Darkness Itself Glows In Me.

Death Makes No Sense Except To People Who Have Passionately Loved Life. How Can One Die Without Having Something To Part From? Detachment Is A Negation Of Both Life And Death. Whoever Has Overcome His Fear Of Death Has Also Triumphed Over Life. For Life Is Nothing But Another Word For This Fear.

To Act Is To Anchor In An Imminent Future, So Imminent It Becomes Almost Tangible; To Act Is To Feel You Are Consubstantial With That Future.

Only Those Moments Count, When The Desire To Remain By Yourself Is So Powerful That You'd Prefer To Blow Your Brains Out Than Exchange A Word With Someone.

Old Age, After All, Is Merely The Punishment For Having Lived.

Reality Is A Creation Of Our Excesses.

Jealousy - That Jumble Of Secret Worship And Ostensible Aversion.

Pursued By Our Origins... We All Are.

Self-conscious Rejection Of The Absolute Is The Best Way To Resist God; Thus Illusion, The Substance Of Life, Is Saved.

Every Thought Derives From A Thwarted Sensation.

Each Concession We Make Is Accompanied By An Inner Diminution Of Which We Are Not Immediately Conscious.

Crime In Full Glory Consolidates Authority By The Sacred Fear It Inspires.

It Has Been A Long Time Since Philosophers Have Read Men's Souls. It Is Not Their Task, We Are Told. Perhaps. But We Must Not Be Surprised If They No Longer Matter Much To Us.

Nothing Sweeter Than To Drag Oneself Along Behind Events; And Nothing More Reasonable. But Without A Strong Dose Of Madness, No Initiative, No Enterprise, No Gesture. Reason: The Rust Of Our Vitality. It Is The Madman In Us Who Forces Us To Adventure; Once He Abandons Us, We Are Lost; Everything Depends On Him, Even Our Vegetative Life; It Is He Who Invites Us, Who Obliges Us To Breathe, And It Is Also He Who Forces Our Blood To Venture Through Our Veins. Once He Withdraws, We Are Alone Indeed! We Cannot Be Normal And Alive At The Same Time.

Nothing Is So Wearing As The Possession Or Abuse Of Liberty.

A Garbled Quotation Is Equivalent To A Betrayal, An Insult, A Prejudice.

To Think Is To Take A Cunning Revenge In Which We Camouflage Our Baseness And Conceal Our Lower Instincts.

Melancholy: An Appetite No Misery Satisfies.

A Great Step Forward Was Made The Day Men Understood That In Order To Torment One Another More Efficiently They Would Have To Gather Together, To Organize Themselves Into A Society

Ennui Is The Echo In Us Of Time Tearing Itself Apart.

A Decadent Civilization Compromises With Its Disease, Cherishes The Virus Infecting It, Loses Its Self-respect.

What Strangely Enchanted Tunes Gush Forth During Those Sleepless Nights!

Tolerance Cannot Seduce The Young.

Wherever We Go, We Come Up Against The Human, A Repulsive Ubiquity Before Which We Fall Into Stupor And Revolt, A Perplexity On Fire.

What To Think Of Other People? I Ask Myself This Question Each Time I Make A New Acquaintance. So Strange Does It Seem To Me That We Exist, And That We Consent To Exist.

What Can Be Said, Lacks Reality. Only What Fails To Make Its Way Into Words Exists And Counts.

How Easy It Is To Be "deep": All You Have To Do Is Let Yourself Sink Into Your Own Flaws.

What Every Man Who Loves His Country Hopes For In His Inmost Heart: The Suppression Of Half His Compatriots.

Progress Is The Injustice Each Generation Commits With Regard To Its Predecessors.

I Do Not Want To See Bp Nickel And Diming These Businesses That Are Having A Tough Time.

Were We To Undertake An Exhaustive Self-scrutiny, Disgust Would Paralyze Us, We Would Be Doomed To A Thankless Existence.

Ideas Should Be Neutral. But Man Animates Them With His Passions And Folly. Impure And Turned Into Beliefs, They Take On The Appearance Of Reality. The Passage From Logic Is Consummated. Thus Are Born Ideologies, Doctrines, And Bloody Farce.

How Important Can It Be That I Suffer And Think? My Presence In This World Will Disturb A Few Tranquil Lives And Will Unsettle The Unconscious And Pleasant Naiveté Of Others. Although I Feel That My Tragedy Is The Greatest In History - Greater Than The Fall Of Empires - I Am Nevertheless Aware Of My Total Insignificance. I Am Absolutely Persuaded That I Am Nothing In This Universe; Yet I Feel That Mine Is The Only Real Existence.

Life Is Possible Only By The Deficiencies Of Our Imagination And Memory.

If We Had The Courage To Confront The Doubts We Timidly Conceive About Ourselves, None Of Us Would Utter An 'i' Without Shame.

The History Of Ideas Is The History Of The Grudges Of Solitary Men.

The Obsession With Suicide Is Characteristic Of The Man Who Can Neither Live Nor Die, And Whose Attention Never Swerves From This Double Impossibility.

Consciousness Is Much More Than The Thorn, It Is The Dagger In The Flesh.

Consciousness Is Nature's Nightmare.

The Source Of Our Actions Resides In An Unconscious Propensity To Regard Ourselves As The Center, The Cause, And The Conclusion Of Time. Our Reflexes And Our Pride Transform Into A Planet The Parcel Of Flesh And Consciousness We Are.

Society Is Not A Disease, It Is A Disaster. What A Stupid Miracle That One Can Live In It.

What Do You Do From Morning To Night?" "i Endure Myself.

The Reaction Against Your Own Thought In Itself Lends Life To Thought. How This Reaction Is Born Is Hard To Describe, Because It Identifies With The Very Rare Intellectual Tragedies. The Tension, The Degree And Level Of Intensity Of A Thought Proceeds From Its Internal Antinomies, Which In Turn Are Derived From The Unsolvable Contradictions Of A Soul. Thought Cannot Solve The Contradictions Of The Soul. As Far As Linear Thinking Is Concerned, Thoughts Mirror Themselves In Other Thoughts, Instead Of Mirroring A Destiny.

To Exist Is Equivalent To An Act Of Faith, A Protest Against The Truth, An Interminable Prayer. As Soon As They Consent To Live, The Unbeliever And The Man Of Faith Are Fundamentally The Same, Since Both Have Made The Only Decision That Defines A Being.

Even When Nothing Happens, Everything Seems Too Much For Me. What Can Be Said, Then, In The Presence Of An Event, Any Event?

All The Concessions We Make To Eros Are Holes In Our Desire For The Absolute.

Every Word Affords Me Pain. Yet How Sweet It Would Be If I Could Hear What The Flowers Have To Say About Death!

Is It Possible That Existence Is Our Exile And Nothingness Our Home?

This Very Second Has Vanished Forever, Lost In The Anonymous Mass Of The Irrevocable. It Will Never Return. I Suffer From This And I Do Not. Everything Is Unique - And Insignificant.

Life Inspires More Dread Than Death - It Is Life Which Is The Great Unknown.

We Must Suffer To The End, To The Moment When We Stop Believing In Suffering.

Lucidity's Task: To Attain A Correct Despair, An Olympian Ferocity.

A People Represents Not So Much An Aggregate Of Ideas And Theories As Of Obsessions.

He Who Hates Himself Is Not Humble.

We Derive Our Vitality From Our Store Of Madness.

We Must Learn How To Explode! Any Disease Is Healthier Than The One Provoked By A Hoarded Rage.

Wisdom Disguises Our Wounds; It Teaches Us How To Bleed In Secret.

Everything Turns On Pain; The Rest Is Accessory, Even Nonexistent, For We Remember Only What Hurts. Painful Sensations Being The Only Real Ones, It Is Virtually Useless To Experience Others.

On Creating — What We Crave, What We Want To See In Others Eyes, Is That Servile Expression, An Unconcealed Infatuation With Our Gestures.

Psychoanalysis Is A Technique We Practice At Our Cost; Psychoanalysis Degrades Our Risks, Our Dangers, Our Depths; It Strips Us Of Our Impurities, Of All That Made Us Curious About Ourselves.

Vague A L'ame - Melancholy Yearning For The End Of The World.

What Would Be Left Of Our Tragedies If An Insect Were To Present Us His?

A Marvel That Has Nothing To Offer, Democracy Is At Once A Nation's Paradise And Its Tomb.

My Mission Is To See Things As They Are. Exactly Contrary Of A Mission.

Positive Atheism

The Sole Means Of Protecting Your Solitude Is To Offend Everyone, Beginning With Those You Love.

If There Is Anyone Who Owes Everything To Bach, It Is Certainly God.

I Would Like To Explode, Flow, Crumble Into Dust, And My Disintegration Would Be My Masterpiece.

Under Each Formula Lies A Corpse.

It Is An Understatement To Say That In This Society Injustices Abound: In Truth, It Is Itself The Quintessence Of Injustice.

One Hardly Saves A World Without Ruling It.

No One Should Forget: Eros Alone Can Fulfill Life; Knowledge, Never. Only Eros Makes Sense; Knowledge Is Empty Infinity; – For Thoughts, There Is Always Time; Life Has Its Time; There Is No Thought That Comes Too Late; Any Desire Can Become A Regret.

Let Us Not Be Needlessly Bitter: Certain Failures Are Sometimes Fruitful.

We Rightly Scorn Those Who Have No Made Use Of Their Defects, Who Have Not Exploited Their Deficiencies, And Have Not Been Enriched By Their Losses, As We Despise Any Man Who Does Not Suffer At Being A Man Or Simply At Being. Hence No Graver Insult Can Be Inflicted Than To Call Someone 'happy', No Greater Flattery Than To Grant Him A 'vein Of Melancholy'... This Is Because Gaiety Is Link To No Important Action And Because, Except For The Mad, No One Laughs When He Is Alone.

If You Lack The Power To Demoralize Yourself Along With The Age, To Go As Low And As Far, Do Not Complain Of Being Misunderstood By It.

Utopia Is A Mixture Of Childish Rationalism And Secularized Angelism.

Who Rebels? Who Rises In Arms? Rarely The Slave, But Almost Always The Oppressor Turned Slave.

Melancholy Redeems This Universe, And Yet It Is Melancholy That Separates Us From It.

Mind, Even More Deadly To Empires Than To Individuals, Erodes Them, Compromises Their Solidity.

Suffering Makes You Live Time In Detail, Moment After Moment. Which Is To Say That It Exists For You: Over The Others, The Ones Who Don't Suffer, Time Flows, So That They Don't Live In Time, In Fact They Never Have.

Imaginary Pains Are By Far The Most Real We Suffer, Since We Feel A Constant Need For Them And Invent Them Because There Is No Way Of Doing Without Them.

No Human Beings More Dangerous Than Those Who Have Suffered For A Belief: The Great Persecutors Are Recruited From The Martyrs Not Quite Beheaded. Far From Diminishing The Appetite For Power, Suffering Exasperates It.

There Is No Limit To Suffering.

I Dream Of A Language Whose Words, Like Fists, Would Fracture Jaws.

Man Starts Over Again Everyday, In Spite Of All He Knows, Against All He Knows.

Each Of Us Must Pay For The Slightest Damage He Inflicts Upon A Universe Created For Indifference And Stagnation, Sooner Or Later, He Will Regret Not Having Left It Intact.

We Interest Others By The Misfortune We Spread Around Us.

Tolerance - The Function Of An Extinguished Ardor - Tolerance Cannot Seduce The Young.

I Feel Completely Detached From Any Country, Any Group. I Am A Metaphysically Displaced Person

I Don’t Understand Why We Must Do Things In This World, Why We Must Have Friends And Aspirations, Hopes And Dreams. Wouldn’t It Be Better To Retreat To A Faraway Corner Of The World, Where All Its Noise And Complications Would Be Heard No More? Then We Could Renounce Culture And Ambitions; We Would Lose Everything And Gain Nothing; For What Is There To Be Gained From This World?

The Capital Phenomenon, The Most Catastrophic Disaster, Is Uninterrupted Sleeplessness, That Nothingness Without Release.

The Fact That Life Has No Meaning Is A Reason To Live - Moreover, The Only One.

Meaning Of Life

It Is Not Worth The Bother Of Killing Yourself, Since You Always Kill Yourself Too Late.

Those Who Believe In Their Truth -- The Only Ones Whose Imprint Is Retained By The Memory Of Men -- Leave The Earth Behind Them Strewn With Corpses. Religions Number In Their Ledgers More Murders Than The Bloodiest Tyrannies Account For, And Those Whom Humanity Has Called Divine Far Surpass The Most Conscientious Murderers In Their Thirst For Slaughter.

I Try--without Success--to Stop Finding Reasons For Vanity In Anything. When I Happen To Manage It Nonetheless, I Feel That I No Longer Belong To The Mortal Gang. I Am Above Everything Then, Above The Gods Themselves. Perhaps That Is What Death Is: A Sensation Of Great, Of Extreme Superiority.

For You Who No Longer Possess It, Freedom Is Everything, For Us Who Do, It Is Merely An Illusion.

Man Started Out On The Wrong Foot. The Misadventure In Paradise Was The First Consequence. The Rest Had To Follow.

My Enthusiasms...constitute My Reserves, My Unexploited Resources, Perhaps My Future.

True Moral Elegance Consists In The Art Of Disguising One's Victories As Defeats.

Only Optimists Commit Suicide, Optimists Who No Longer Succeed At Being Optimists. The Others, Having No Reason To Live, Why Would They Have Any To Die?

Man Must Vanquish Himself, Must Do Himself Violence, In Order To Perform The Slightest Action Untainted By Evil.

Show Me One Thing Here On Earth Which Has Begun Well And Not Ended Badly. The Proudest Palpitations Are Engulfed In A Sewer, Where They Cease Throbbing, As Though Having Reached Their Natural Term: This Downfall Constitutes The Heart's Drama And The Negative Meaning Of History.

Not One Moment When I Have Not Been Conscious Of Being Outside Paradise.

To Read Is To Let Someone Else Work For You - The Most Delicate Form Of Exploitation.

Does Our Ferocity Not Derive From The Fact That Our Instincts Are All Too Interested In Other People? If We Attended More To Ourselves And Became The Center, The Object Of Our Murderous Inclinations, The Sum Of Our Intolerances Would Diminish.

A Civilization Is Destroyed Only When Its Gods Are Destroyed.

Discretion Is Deadly To Genius; Ruinous To Talent.

When People Come To Me Saying They Want To Kill Themselves, I Tell Them, "what’s Your Rush? You Can Kill Yourself Any Time You Like. So Calm Down. Suicide Is A Positive Act." And They Do Calm Down.

Philosophers Write For Professors; Thinkers For Writers.

Ambition Is A Drug That Makes Its Addicts Potential Madmen.

That History Just Unfolds, Independently Of A Specified Direction, Of A Goal, No One Is Willing To Admit.

Tears Do Not Burn Except In Solitude.

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.

Losing Love Is So Rich A Philosophical Ordeal That It Makes A Hairdresser Into A Rival Of Socrates.

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.

To Devastate By Language, To Blow Up The Word And With It The World.

We Would Not Be Interested In Human Beings If We Did Not Have The Hope Of Someday Meeting Someone Worse Off Than Ourselves.

Meeting Someone

I Would Like To Go Mad On One Condition, Namely, That I Would Become A Happy Madman, Lively And Always In A Good Mood, Without Any Troubles And Obsessions, Laughing Senselessly From Morning To Night.

What Surrounds Us We Endure Better For Giving It A Name - And Moving On.

I Am Like A Broken Puppet Whose Eyes Have Fallen Inside.

The Mind Is The Result Of The Torments The Flesh Undergoes Or Inflicts Upon Itself.

My Mission Is To Kill Time, And Time's To Kill Me In Its Turn. How Comfortable One Is Among Murderers.

All Philosophers Should End Their Days At Pythia's Feet. There Is Only One Philosophy, That Of Unique Moments.

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