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A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.

Emile M. Cioran

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Emile M. Cioran
Good
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More quotes by Emile M. Cioran

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Reality is a creation of our excesses.
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Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!
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Tolerance cannot seduce the young.
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What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
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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.
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One does not inhabit a country one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
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A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
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If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame.
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How easy it is to be deep: all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.
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Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.
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As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name.
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If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.
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The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran
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Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety refuge among anemic ideas.
Emile M. Cioran
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For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.
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Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
Emile M. Cioran
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Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.
Emile M. Cioran
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Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
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Where are my sensations? They have melted into... me, and what is this me, this self, but the sum of these evaporated sensations?
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