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The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.

Emile M. Cioran

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Emile M. Cioran
Ideas
Men
Grudges
Grudge
Solitary
History

More quotes by Emile M. Cioran

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We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran
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To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
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That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.
Emile M. Cioran
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Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran
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All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran
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To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.
Emile M. Cioran
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The desire to die was my one and only concern to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.
Emile M. Cioran
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An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.
Emile M. Cioran
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Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.
Emile M. Cioran
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Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.
Emile M. Cioran
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Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.
Emile M. Cioran
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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.
Emile M. Cioran
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All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.
Emile M. Cioran
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An existence transfigured by failure.
Emile M. Cioran
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Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
Emile M. Cioran
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Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.
Emile M. Cioran