Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Emil M. Cioran

Quote by Emil M. Cioran

“I cannot differentiate between tears and music' (Nietzsche). Whoever is not immediately struck by the profundity of this statement has not lived for a minute in the intimacy of music. I know no other music than that of tears. Born out of the loss of paradise, music gives birth to the symbols of this loss: tears.”

Quote by Emil M. Cioran

Book:Tears and Saints
Create image

Work

Tears and Saints

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Emil M. Cioran

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Emil M. Cioran. more

You May Also Like

“The empire of the sky occupies territory emptied of vitality. Heavenly imperialism aims at biological neutrality. How does music suck our blood? Man cannot live without support in space. But music annihilates space completely. The only art capable of bringing comfort, yet it opens up more wounds than all the others! Music is the sound track of askesis. Could one make love after Bach? Not even after Handel, whose unearthliness does not have a heavenly perfume. Music is a tomb of delights, beatitude which buries us. Saintliness also draws blood. We lose it in direct proportion to our longing for heaven. The roads to heaven have been worn smooth by all the erring instincts. Indeed, heaven was born of these errors.”

PhilosophyMusicSaintsSaintliness
Book:Tears and Saints
Create image

“Once music is detached from function, once it becomes a repertory art, it explicitly strives to define itself, out of itself, to become "mathemat- ical"—that is to say, to begin from premises and proceed to conclusions by interpreting its own universe, finding its own laws. Systems of harmony and counterpoint become tools for elaborate musical explorations. A great deal of Western music is as much a manifestation of idealism as is mathematics.”

MusicWestern MusicMusic Composition
Book:Emblems of Mind: The Inner Life of Music and Mathematics
Create image

“In every piece of music he played, I heard more than the piece itself - it seemed as though everything he played was related, mysteriously connected...all of them said the same thing, said what the musician had in his soul too: yearning, a sincere grasping at the world combined with desperately cutting oneself off from it, a fervent hearkening to one's own dark soul, the frenzy of devotion and a profound curiosity about the miraculous.”

Music
Book:Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Create image