I know only one thing. When I sleep, I know no fear, no, trouble, no bliss. Blessing on him who invented sleep. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. There is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death.
In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.
You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all.
As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.
As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.
We have to entertain the possibility that there is no reason for something existing; or that the split between subject and object is only our name for something equally accidental we call knowledge; or, an even more difficult thought, that while there may be some order to the self and the cosmos, to the microcosm and macrocosm, it is an order that is absolutely indifferent to our existence, and of which we can have only a negative awareness.
We must display our unhappiness and from time to time be heard to sigh, be seen to be impatient: for if we let others see how happy and secure in ourselves we are in spite of suffering and deprivation, how malicious and envious we would make them! — We have to take care not to corrupt our fellow men; moreover, they would in the instance referred to impose upon us a heavy impost, and our public suffering is in any event also our private advantage.
The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
“The state of being alone was my religion. You have become the center of my life, the goddess of one who does not believe in anything, the greatest happiness and unhappiness ever encountered.”
Emil Cioran in a letter to Friedgard Thoma.
Emil Cioran in a letter to Friedgard Thoma.
I learned that just beneath the surface there’s another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn’t find the proof. It was just a feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything.
Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it. Life would be bearable only to frivolous natures, those in fact who do not remember.