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A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.

Emile M. Cioran

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Emile M. Cioran
Life
Decline
Sole
Obsession
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Even when nothing happens, everything seems too much for me. What can be said, then, in the presence of an event, any event?
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All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.
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The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.
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An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.
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The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.
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Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.
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True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.
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Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
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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.
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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.
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We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.
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On Creating — What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.
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It is because we are all impostors that we endure each other. The man who does not consent to lie will see the earth shrink under his feet: we are biologically obliged to the false
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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.
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Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.
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A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
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Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.
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Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.
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What strangely enchanted tunes gush forth during those sleepless nights!
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If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.
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