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

— Emil M. Cioran

I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.

— Emil M. Cioran

I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece.

— Emil M. Cioran

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

— Emil M. Cioran

Man starts over again every day, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

— Emil M. Cioran

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

— Emil M. Cioran

Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

— Emil M. Cioran

My soul is chaos, how can it be at all? There is everything in me: search and you will find out ... in me anything is possible, for I am he who at the supreme moment, in front of absolute nothingness, will laugh.

— Emil M. Cioran

No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it is so. Then why celebrate or denigrate? Because to exist is to evaluate, to emit judgments, and because abstention, when it is not the effect of apathy or cowardice, requires an effort no one manages to make.

— Emil M. Cioran

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.

— Emil M. Cioran