Quotessence
Home / Books / On the Heights of Despair

On the Heights of Despair

Book by Emil M. Cioran · 14 quotes · Cioran, Philosophy, Death

Filter quotes by topic

AllCioranPhilosophyDeathDespairOn The Heights Of DespairExistentialismFilozofieNihilismPsychologySufferingAbsolute SufferingAnxietyConsciousnessConsolationEmil M CioranExistentalismGrotesqueHumanHumorLaughter

On the Heights of Despair Quotes

“Some people maintain that the fear of death does not have a deeper justification, because as long as there is an I there is no death, and once dead there is no I any longer. These people have forgotten about the very strange phenomenon of gradual agony. What comfort does this artificial distinction between the I and death offer a man who has a strong premonition of death? What meaning can logical argument or subtle thought have for someone deeply imbued with a feeling of the irrevocable? All attempts to bring existential questions onto a logical plane are null and void. Philosophers are too proud to confess their fear of death and too supercilious to acknowledge the spiritual fecundity of illness. Their reflections on death exhibit a hypocritical serenity; in fact, they tremble with fear more than anyone else. One should not forget that philosophy is the art of masking inner torments.”

LifePhilosophyDeathExistentialismNihilismCioranOn The Heights Of DespairOn Philosophers
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image

“Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from “problems”, but from his own inner torment and fire. It’s a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and there never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions which do not engage the essence of our subjectivity. I despise the absence of risks, madness and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate thinking is! Lyricism feeds it like blood pumped into the heart!”

DespairAnxietyCioranLyricism
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image

“I hate wise men because they are lazy, cowardly, and prudent. To the philosophers' equanimity, which makes them indifferent to both pleasure and pain, I prefer devouring passions. The sage knows neither the tragedy of passion, nor the fear of death, nor risk and enthusiasm, nor barbaric, grotesque, or sublime heroism. He talks in proverbs and gives advice. He does not live, feel, desire, wait for anything. He levels down all the incongruities of life and then suffers the consequences. So much more complex is the man who suffers from limitless anxiety. The wise man's life is empty and sterile, for it is free from contradiction and despair. An existence full of irreconcilable contradictions is so much richer and creative. The wise man's resignation springs from inner void, not inner fire. I would rather die of fire than of void.”

Wisdom
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image

“There are people who are destined to taste only the poison in things, for whom any surprise is a painful surprise and any experience a new occasion for torture. if someone were to say to me that such suffering has subjective reasons, related to the individual's particular makeup, i would then ask; is there an objective criterion for evaluating suffering? who can say with precision that my neighbor suffers more than i do or that jesus suffered more than all of us? there is no objective standard because suffering cannot be measured according to the external stimulation or local irritation of the organism, but only as it is felt and reflected in consciousness. alas, from this point of view, any hierarchy is out of the question. each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and unlimited. how much would we diminish our own personal suffering if we were to compare it to all the world's sufferings until now, to the most horrifying agonies and the most complicated tortures, the mostcruel deaths and the most painful betrayals, all the lepers, all those burned alive or starved to death? nobody is comforted in his sufferings by the thought that we are all mortals, nor does anybody who suffers really find comfort in the past or present suffering of others. because in this organically insufficient and fragmentary world, the individual is set to live fully, wishing to make of his own existence an absolute.”

PainSufferingPoisonAbsolute SufferingSuffering Hierarchy
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image

“Healthy, normal people cannot experience either agony or death. They live as if life had a definitive character. It is an integral part of normal people's superficial equilibrium to take life as absolutely independent from death and to objectify death as a reality transcending life. That's why they perceive death as coming from the outside, not as an inner fatality of life itself. One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death's prisoner. Metaphysical revelations begin only when one's superficial equilibrium starts to totter and a painful struggle is substituted for naive spontaneity. The premonition of death is so rare in average people that one can can practically say that it does not exist. The fact that the presentiment of death appears only when life is shaken to its foundations proves beyond doubt the immanence of death in life. An insight into these depths shows us how illusory is the belief in life's integrity and how well founded the belief in a metaphysical substratum of demonism.”

PhilosophyDeathPsychologyCioranExistentalismOn The Heights Of DespairNihilismi
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image

“Prefer de o mie de ori o existenţă dramatică, torturată pentru destinul ei în lume şi chinuită de cele mai consumatoare flăcări interioare, decât un om abstract, frământat de probleme abstracte care nu angajează fondul subiectivităţii noastre. Dispreţuiesc în această gândire absenţa riscului, a nebuniei şi a pasiunii. Cât de fecundă este o gândire vie, pasionată, în care lirismul circulă ca sângele în vine!”

Filozofie
Book:On the Heights of Despair
Create image