Life Quotes Quote by Emil Cioran — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.”

“Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c'est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux stoïciens. Ils ont atteint la sagesse, on ne peut donc plus les appeler des philosophes au sens propre du terme. De mon point de vue, la sagesse est le terme naturel de la philosophie, sa fin dans les deux sens du mot. Une philosophie finit en sagesse et par là même disparaît.”

“As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.”

“Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.”

“The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.”

“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.”

““You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude”

“He looked him right in the eyes and saw a man who was great and good and human, who had done extraordinary things and terrible things and been broken and reassembled as a shell, only then to do the bravest thing of all: He had kept on living, though there are easier paths to take.”

““Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.”

“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.”

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”