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The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

Emile M. Cioran

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Emile M. Cioran
Hostile
Protest
Wise
Form
Men
Abdicates
Novelty
Sage

More quotes by Emile M. Cioran

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Normal people have nothing to forget.
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However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.
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At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.
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All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.
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The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.
Emile M. Cioran
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If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.
Emile M. Cioran
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All people see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?
Emile M. Cioran
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Tolerance cannot seduce the young.
Emile M. Cioran
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Transmitting one's flaws [through procreation] to someone else is a crime. I could never consent to give life to someone who would inherent my ailments.
Emile M. Cioran
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An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.
Emile M. Cioran
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I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them.
Emile M. Cioran
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One is and remains a slave as long as one is not cured of hoping.
Emile M. Cioran
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Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.
Emile M. Cioran
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Wisdom disguises our wounds it teaches us how to bleed in secret.
Emile M. Cioran
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The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.
Emile M. Cioran
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The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.
Emile M. Cioran
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The amount of chiaroscuro an idea harbors is the only index of its profundity.
Emile M. Cioran
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It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.
Emile M. Cioran
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One does not inhabit a country one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran