One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland --and no other.
E. M. Cioran
Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
E. M. Cioran
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.
E. M. Cioran
If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
E. M. Cioran
A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect.
E. M. Cioran
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
E. M. Cioran
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.
E. M. Cioran
There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.
E. M. Cioran
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.