Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher and essayist. He is one of the greatest Romanian philosophers and I’m proud to say this.

His works often depict an atmosphere of torment and torture, states that Cioran experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism often prone to expressing violent feelings. The books he wrote in Romanian are best identified with this characteristic. Preoccupied with the problem of death and suffering, he was attracted to the idea of suicide, believing it to be an idea that could help one go on living, an idea which he fully explored in On the Heights of Despair.

The theme of human alienation, the most prominent existentialist theme, presented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, is thus formulated, in 1932, by young Cioran: “Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”

It has no sense to speak about his philosophy, but I can add here some quotes we all love.

Quotes:

• A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
• A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.
• A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation’s paradise and its tomb.
• A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
• By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
• Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.
• For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.
• God – a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

Source: Quotes