"If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?"

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

"In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it."

— Samuel Johnson

Literature1709–1784

#wisdom

"From shortly after his death until the present Gascoigne's reputation as the foremost poet of his generation and as a precursor of the great Elizabethans has remained constant."

— George Gascoigne

Literature1530–1577

#death

"The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn."

— William James

Psychology1842–1910

#life

"It is being paid for by private dollars. … The city is not paying for it; the city has no dollars in this. … I don't know the shape of the bus, I don't know the color of the bus, I don't know the leng…"

— Catherine Pugh

Politics1950

#philosophy