Emil Cioran

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

One should live and die where one was born... I've been bored everywhere I went. What was the point of leaving Coasta Boacu?

However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.