Emil Cioran citáty

strana 2

„Filozofie nabízí protilátku proti melancholii. A mnozí stále věří v hloubku filozofie!“

„Když víte, že nic není skutečné, nechápete, proč byste se měli namáhat s dokazováním.“

„Největší událostí druhé poloviny 20. století je zanikání chodníků.“

„Ani všichni filozofové světa spolu nemají takovou hodnotu jako jeden světec.“

„Člověk se naplní teprve tehdy, když přestane být člověkem.“

„Koneckonců, proč by obyčejní lidé měli chtít uvažovat o konci, zvláště když vidíme, v jakém stavu jsou ti, kteří o něm uvažují?“

„Říkával jsi, že musíme žít, jako bychom nikdy neměli zemřít. Copak nevíš, že tak žijí všichni, včetně těch, kteří jsou posedlí smrtí?“

„Na co čekáte, abyste to vzdali?“

“When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.”

“One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.”

“A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.”

“In order to conceive, and to steep ourselves in, unreality, we must have it constantly present to our minds. The day we feel it, see it, everything becomes unreal, except that unreality which alone makes existence tolerable.”

“After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?”

“Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!”

“Man is fulfilled only when he ceases to be man.”

“What are you waiting for in order to give up?”

“How can you know if you are in the truth? The criterion is simple enough: if others make a vacuum around you, there is not a doubt in the world that you are closer to the essential than they are.”

“But, braggart demons, we postpone our end: how could we renounce the display of our freedom, the show of our pride?”

“The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?”

“The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.”

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history — greater than the fall of empires — I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”

“By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed?”

“Doutbless, revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim, or else we are tangled in the subtleties of remorse; so vengeance too has its venom, though it comes closer to what we are, to what we feel, to the very law of the self; it is also healthier than magnanimity. The Furies were held to antedate the gods, Zeus included. Vengeance before Divinity! This is the Major intuition of ancient mythology.”

“Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.”

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.”

“Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”

“Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.”

“Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.”

“Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”

“Tears do not burn except in solitude.”

“If we could truly see ourselves the way others see us we'd disappear on the spot.”

“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.”

“We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.”

“True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.”

“To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.”

“No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.”