If I were asked to summarise as briefly as possible my vision of things, to reduce it to its most succinct expression, I should replace words with an exclamation point, a definitive !
I have never met one deranged mind that lacked curiosity about God. Are we to conclude from this that there exists a link between the search for the absolute and the disaggregation of the brain?
Despondency. This English word, charged with all the nuances of collapse, will have been the key to my years, the emblem of my moments, of my negative courage, of my invalidation of all tomorrows.
In our veins flows the blood of monkeys. If we were to think of it often, we should end by giving up. No more theology, no more metaphysics - which comes down to saying no more divagations, no more arrogance, no more excess, no more anything ...
So many memories that loom up without apparent necessity - of what use are they, except to show us that with age we are becoming external to our own life, that these remote 'events' no longer have anything to do with us, and that one day the same will be true of this life itself?
Hindu philosophy pursues deliverance; Greek - with the exception of Pyrrho, Epicurus, and a few unclassifiable figures - is a disappointment: it seeks only ... truth.
If he doesn't have the voice of a dying man, it is because it has been so long now that he is no longer 'in life'. 'I am a snuffed candle' is the most accurate thing he said about his latest metamorphosis. When I suggested the possibility of a miracle, 'It would take more than one' was his reply.
Glum sky: my mind masquerading as the firmament.
Impossible to enter into a dialogue with physical pain.
Montesquieu: 'Happiness or misery consists in a certain arrangement of organs'.
Letters one receives filled with nothing but internal debate, metaphysical interrogations, rapidly become tiresome. In everything there must be something petty if there is to be the impression of truth. If the angels were to write, they would be - except for the fallen ones - unreadable. Purity passes with difficulty because it is incompatible with breathing.
To break with one's gods, with one's ancestors, with one's language and one's country, to break tout court, is a terrible ordeal, that is certain; but it is also an exacting one, avidly sought by the defector and, even more, by the traitor.
It is not by genius, it is by suffering, by suffering only, that one ceases to be a marionette.
To more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.
Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.
Everything that inconveniences us allows us to define ourselves. Without indispositions, no identity - the luck and misfortune of a conscious organism.
Of all things one feels, nothing gives the impression of being at the very heart of truth so much as fits of unaccountable despair; compared to these, everything seems frivolous, debased, lacking in substance and interest.
To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.
When I think of him now, I still believe he was really someone; of all the inhabitants of the village, he alone had enough imagination to ruin his life.
E. M. Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations