I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end. - Emil Cioran

When we are young, we take a certain pleasure in our infirmities. They seem so new, so rich! With age, they no longer surprise us, we know them too well. Now, without anything unexpected in them, they do not deserve to be endured.

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.