Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego... Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world? Manuscripts by Romanian Philosopher Cioran Fetch €400,000". Balkan Insight. 8 April 2011 . Retrieved 22 March 2021.

Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves — that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it. Cioran revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid". In its original form, the book expressed sympathy for totalitarianism, [13] a view which was also present in various articles Cioran wrote at the time, [14] and which aimed to establish " urbanization and industrialization" as "the two obsessions of a rising people". [15]

But, in the end, I find him too melodramatic, too Romantic. Perhaps this is inevitable given that I am comfortable, happily employed, well-fed, in excellent health, and in love with my wife. Although pessimism perspires throughout the book, still you can find traces of optimism, which was said to define his life, rather the pessimism in his works, as in the essay “Enthusiasm as a form of love”: “the joy of achieving and the ecstasy of efficiency are the essential characteristics of the man for whom life is a leap toward heights where destructive forces lose their negative intensity.” He later renounced not only his support for the Iron Guard, but also their nationalist ideas, and frequently expressed regret and repentance for his emotional implication in it. For example, in a 1972 interview, he condemned it as "a complex of movements; more than this, a demented sect and a party", saying, "I found out then [...] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction. [...] I am now immune to it". [23] I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to empty abstraction. A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people.

After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence (123). It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.Jakob, Michel; Cioran, Emil; Greenspan, Kate (1994). "Wakefulness and Obsession: An Interview with E.M. Cioran". Salmagundi. 103 (103): 143. JSTOR 40548762– via JSTOR. Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour. Emil Cioran ( Romanian: [eˈmil tʃoˈran] ⓘ, French: [emil sjɔʁɑ̃]; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, until his death in 1995.

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world? We suffer: the external world begins to exist . . .; we suffer to excess: it vanishes. Pain instigates the world only to unmask its unreality. Quotes [ edit ] On the Heights of Despair (1934) [ edit ] We are fulfilled only when we aspire to nothing, when we are impregnated by that nothing to the point of intoxication. Romanian title: Pe culmile disperării On the Heights of Despair received a young authors' prize, established by the King Carol II Foundation for Art and Literature. [1] Cioran's later works received other awards, including the Prix Rogier Namier and the Grand prix de littérature Paul-Morand, although Cioran declined both. [2] In 1992, On the Heights of Despair was translated into English by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston.Cioran praises lyricism and heightened emotional states for their ability to force humans to reconsider the truly important categories of the human condition, such as love and death. Humans may ignore such categories for several years by focusing on the routines of everyday life, or by participating in rational or intellectual endeavors. Cioran scorns the latter categories: The initial revelation of any monastery: everything is nothing. Thus begin all mysticisms. It is less than one step from nothing to God, for God is the positive expression of nothingness. Regier, Willis (2005). "Cioran's Nietzsche". French Forum. 30 (3): 78. doi: 10.1353/frf.2006.0012. JSTOR 40552402. S2CID 170571716– via JSTOR.

There are people who are destined to taste only the poison in things, for whom any surprise is a painful surprise and any experience a new occasion for torture. if someone were to say to me that such suffering has subjective reasons, related to the individual's particular makeup, i would then ask; is there an objective criterion for evaluating suffering? who can say with precision that my neighbor suffers more than i do or that jesus suffered more than all of us? there is no objective standard because suffering cannot be measured according to the external stimulation or local irritation of the organism, but only as it is felt and reflected in consciousness. alas, from this point of view, any hierarchy is out of the question. each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and unlimited. how much would we diminish our own personal suffering if we were to compare it to all the world's sufferings until now, to the most horrifying agonies and the most complicated tortures, the mostcruel deaths and the most painful betrayals, all the lepers, all those burned alive or starved to death? nobody is comforted in his sufferings by the thought that we are all mortals, nor does anybody who suffers really find comfort in the past or present suffering of others. because in this organically insufficient and fragmentary world, the individual is set to live fully, wishing to make of his own existence an absolute.” We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence. Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears. Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis. One of the biggest paradoxes of our world: memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

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You have dreamed of setting the world ablaze, and you have not even managed to communicate your fire to words, to light up a single one! But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle. . .