"We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything."

Emil Cioran Philosophy See all quotes by Emil Cioran →

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“Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!”

“Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.”

“Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.”

“Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”

“The more one is obsessed with God, the less one is innocent. Nobody bothered about him in paradise. The fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.”

Resonant Thoughts

"This is past, and it really comes from a very dark moment of my life. Dying is...When people say there is no alternative, there is always an alternative - to die, for example. It's a choice. You alway…"

— Marjane Satrapi

Literature1969

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"On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got…"

— Terry Pratchett

Literature1948–2015

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"Thirdly, he must have lost himself in a waylessness and in a darkness in which all contemplatives wander around in enjoyment and can no longer find themselves in a creaturely way. In the abyss of this…"

— John Ruysbroeck

Literature1293–1381

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"The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natural bodies are; namely, as furnishing experimental data for the ascertaining of p…"

— William John Macquorn Rankine

Science1820–1872

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