Quotes from A Short History of Decay

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy . . . whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games.

Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional. History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“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. . .”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave’s virtue.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Once I had a “self”; now I am no more than an object.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“إذا كانت الحياة تحتل المركز الأول في سُلم الأكاذيب, فالحب يأتي بعدها مُباشرة.كذبة داخل كذبة هي التعبير عن موقفنا الهجين,الحب محاط بادوات غبطى وتعذيب تعود إلى ما نجده في أحدهم كبديل لأنفسنا . لكن يالها من خدعة تُحول عيوننا بعيداً عن العزلة!, هل هناك أي خيبة أكثر إذلالاً للعقل؟ الحب مُسكن مؤقت للمعرفة;اليقظة والمعرفة تفتل الحب. اللاواقعية لايمكنها أن تنتصر إلى أجل غير مُسمى,حتى بتقنيع المظاهر لأكبر كذبة تمجيداً. علاوة على ذلك من الذي لديه أوهام صلبة بما يكفي ليرى في الأخر ما لم يراه عبثاً في نفسه؟ أيمكن أن نجد في تنور من الأحشاء ما لم نجده في الكون؟”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a Saint Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“لكي يجد المرء نفسه، لاشيء أفضل له من أن يُنسَى وأن لا يأتي أحدهم ليتدخل بينه وبين ما هو مهم. كلما انصرف الآخرون عنا ازداد عملهم من أجل كمالنا: إنهم ينقذوننا من خلال هجرنا”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create false gods, he then feverishly adopts them; his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“umiremo srazmerno broju rechi koje razbacujemo svuda oko sebe.oni koji govore nemaju tajni. a svi govorimo. izdajemo se, krchmimo dushu; svako se, kao dzhelat neizrecivog, upinje da unishti sve tajne, pochev od sopstvenih.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“المرض منفذ لا إرادي إلى ذواتنا يجبرنا على التوغل في العمق ويحكمنا به والمريض .. إنه ميتافيزيقي رغم أنفه”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“لا وجود لحرية ولا حياة حقيقة من دون التمرن على التخلص من الملكية”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Espousing the melancholy of ancient symbols, I would have freed myself.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams. Thus sleep’s labor not only diminishes the power of our thought, but even that of our secrets.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“In the verbal conflagration of a Shakespeare and a Shelley we smell the ash of words, backwash and effluvium of an impossible cosmogony. The terms encroach upon each other, as though none could attain the equivalent of the inner dilation; this is the hernia of the image, the transcendent rupture of poor words, born of everyday use and miraculously raised to the heart’s altitudes. The truths of beauty are fed on exaggerations which, upon the merest analysis, turn out to be monstrous and meaningless. Poetry: demiurgical divagation of the vocabulary. . . . Has charlatanism ever been more effectively combined with ecstasy? Lying, the wellspring of all tears! such is the imposture of genius and the secret of art. Trifles swollen to the heavens; the improbable, generator of a universe! In every genius coexists a braggart and a god.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“مستشرساً من أجل إنقاذ الماضي، يمثل الندم ملجأنا الوحيد ضد مناورات النسيان وماذا يكون الندم في جوهره غير الذاكرة وقد انتقلت إلى الهجوم”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“و كنا في لحظة الولادة مُدركين كما نحن في نهاية سن المراهقة, لكان من المرجح أن الإنتحار في عمر الخامسة ظاهرة عادية أو مسألة شرف,لكننا نستيقظ مُتأخرين”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“*

استيقظت مندفعًا من النوم بسبب هذا التساؤل: "إلى أين تذهب هذه اللحظة؟" وكان جوابي: "إلى الموت" وسرعان ما عدت إلى النوم.

*”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“*

ترياق السأم هو الخوف. ينبغي أن يكون الدواء أقوى من الداء.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Măsurăm valoarea individului după suma dezacordurilor sale cu lucrurile, după neputinţa de a fi indiferent, după refuzul de a deveni obiect. De aici declasarea ideii de Bine, de aici voga Diavolului. Cît timp am trăit în iadul unor angoase elegante, ne împăcăm de minune cu Dumnezeu. Cînd alte spaime, mai sordide, s-au abătut peste noi, ne-a trebuit un alt sistem de referinţă, un alt patron. Diavolul era personajul visat. Totul în el se potriveşte cu natura evenimentelor, pe care le generează şi guvernează: atributele lui coincid cu ale timpului. Să ni-l facem icoană, aşadar, de vreme ce, departe de a fi un produs al subiectivităţii noastre, o creaţie a nevoii de blasfemie ori de singurătate, el este demonul îndoielilor şi spaimelor noastre, instigatorul rătăcirilor omeneşti. Protestele, furiile sale nu-s totuşi lipsite de echivoc: acest „mare Nefericit" e un rebel care se îndoieşte. Dacă firea i-ar fi simplă, dintr-o bucată, nu ne-ar înduioşa defel; dar paradoxurile, contradicţiile lui sînt ale noastre: el strînge laolaltă neputinţele omului, serveşte de model revoltelor şi urii cu care ne înfruntăm noi pe noi înşine. Definiţia infernului? S-o căutăm în forma aceasta de revoltă şi ură, în supliciul orgoliului rănit, în senzaţia de a fi o înfricoşătoare cantitate neglijabilă, în chinurile „eului", ale acestui „eu" cu care începe sfîrşitul nostru.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Am întors spatele filozofiei cînd mi-am dat seama că e cu neputinţă să descopăr la Kant vreo slăbiciune omenească, vreo urmă adevărată de tristeţe; la Kant şi la toţi filozofii. In raport cu muzica, cu mistica şi poezia, activitatea filozofică e hrănită de o sevă sub¬ţiată şi de o profunzime suspectă, care nu-i ademe¬neşte decît pe oamenii timizi sau căldicei. De altfel, filozofia — nelinişte impersonală, refugiu în preajma unor idei anemice — e soluţia tuturor celor care fug de exuberanţa corupătoare a vieţii. Aproape toţi filo¬zofii au sfîrşit bine: iată supremul argument îm¬potriva filozofiei. Sfîrşitul lui Socrate însuşi nu are în el nimic tragic: e o neînţelegere, sfîrşitul unui pedagog — iar Nietzsche s-a prăbuşit doar ca poet şi vizionar: el şi-a ispăşit extazele, nu raţionamentele.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Viaţa în comun devine intolerabilă, iar viaţa de unul singur, şi mai de nesu portat.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let “desire” be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

“Bach: a scale of tears upon which our desires for God ascend.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from A Short History of Decay

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