cioran II

"When we have worn out the interest we once took in death, when we realize we have nothing more to gain from it, we fall back on birth, we turn to a much more inexhaustible abyss."

"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."

"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."

"I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentus pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known."

"I think of so many friends who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death."

"Not to have been born, merely musing on that-what happiness, what freedom, what space!"

"Have you suffered for knowledge? This is crucial, perhaps the sole question we should ask ourselves when we scrutinize anything, especially a thinker."

"I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions" [Cioran]

"each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me."

"It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."

"What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself."

"I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies"

"Firsthand thinkers meditate upon things; the others upon problems. We must live face to face with being, and not with the mind."

"In relation to any act of life, the mind acts as a killjoy."

"consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh."

"an existence constantly transfigured by failure"

"She meant absolutely nothing to me. Realizing, suddenly, after so many years, that whatever happens I shall never see her again, I nearly collapsed. We understand what death is only by suddenly remembering the face of someone who has benn a matter of indifference to us."

"To realize, in rage and desolation alike, that nature...will not long grant us 'this morsel of matter she lends.'-This morsel of matter: by dint of pondering it we reach peace, though a peace it would be better never to have known."

"To be happy you must contanly bear in mind the miseries you have escaped. This would be a way for memory to redeem itself, since ordinarily it preserves only disasters, eager-and with what success!-to sabotage happiness."

"we have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.