Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Music]

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Oppression]

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Fame]

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Fanatics and Fanaticism]

Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent --unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it --we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Fear]

What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?
~ E. M. Cioran - [Freedom]

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Frustration]

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
~ E. M. Cioran - [God]

God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
~ E. M. Cioran - [God]

No one can keep his grieves in their prime; they use themselves up.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Grief]

To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Habit]

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Injustice]

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Insomnia]

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Consciousness]

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Conversation]

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Critics and Criticism]

Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Decay]

A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Disease]

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 - [Egotism]

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
~ E. M. Cioran - [Evil]