Emil Cioran

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. ”

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas. ”

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy. ”

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers. ”

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in. ”

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity? ”

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment. ”

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen. ”

Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture. ”

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea. ”