Quote

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

Emile M. Cioran

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Emile M. Cioran

Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
One doesn't live in a country, one lives in a language.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Tolerance cannot seduce the young.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
What strangely enchanted tunes gush forth during those sleepless nights!
Emile M. Cioran
Image
Word - that invisible dagger.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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
Image
A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.
Emile M. Cioran
Image
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.
Emile M. Cioran