Emil Cioran Quotes

Eros is very close to death. And both things, in a way, balance each other.

Life is wasted on the living.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.

That's the story of life - when you start enjoying people, it's always too late.

I suppose there are times when I can't believe that I've lived the way that I have and done the things that I've done. Life's a joke anyway. It's all ridiculous. It's all so short.

Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all.

To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived.

I wonder if things can happen too early or too late or if everything happens at exactly the right time. If so, how sad and beautiful.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

Nothing lasts forever but we always try, and I just can't help but wonder why we let it pass us by

I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.

So I'll wait for you... And I'll burn Will I ever see your sweet return? Oh, will I ever learn? Oh, Lover, you should've come over Cause it's not too late.

Better ten days of love than years of regretting.

She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!

Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.

Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.

Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all.

You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.

An unfulfilled life makes a hard man.

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

If you distill the essence of everything, what life is about, every single one of us is given a short moment in time on this planet, and we all have one universal need and desire, and that is to be loved and to love.

It occurred to me then that a lot of life was either about wanting and not having, or having and not wanting.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

But the meaning of life is not . . . explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Often when we realize how precious those seconds are, it's too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realize too late.