I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why… - Emil Cioran

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I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

Emil Cioran

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About Emil Cioran

Emil Cioran (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist whose work is known for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, which frequently engages with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism.

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Alternative Names: Emil Mihai Cioran • Emil-Michel Cioran

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Albert Camus Fernando Pessoa Jean-Paul Sartre Friedrich Nietzsche Henry Miller

Additional quotes by Emil Cioran

One of the biggest paradoxes of our world: memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?

Self-knowledge — the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat … - Emil Cioran

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