"A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed."

Cioran, E. M. on god   

"To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring."

Cioran, E. M. on habit   

"Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven."

Beaumont, Francis on faith
9 fans of this quote   

"What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth."

Butler, Samuel on faith
6 fans of this quote   

"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success."

Freud, Sigmund on america
8 fans of this quote   

"Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history."

Cioran, E. M. on decay   

"There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be."

Cioran, E. M. on existence
3 fans of this quote   

"To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer. As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being."

Cioran, E. M. on existence   

"The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster."

Cioran, E. M. on fanatics and fanaticism
4 fans of this quote   

"We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves."

Cioran, E. M. on socializing and socialism   

"Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist --a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist --only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression."

Cioran, E. M. on pessimism
4 fans of this quote   

"Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again."

Cioran, E. M. on solitude
4 fans of this quote   

"The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility."

Cioran, E. M. on suicide
7 fans of this quote   

"What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?"

Cioran, E. M. on freedom   

"When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever."

Cioran, E. M. on salvation
3 fans of this quote   

"Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off."

Cioran, E. M. on art
3 fans of this quote   

"No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it."

Cioran, E. M. on art   

"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one."

Cioran, E. M. on life   

"Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness."

Cioran, E. M. on reason
4 fans of this quote   

"Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself."

Cioran, E. M. on insomnia   

"If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot."

Cioran, E. M. on self-image
6 fans of this quote   

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

Angelou, Maya on hope
96 fans of this quote   

"If you desire faith, then you have faith enough."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on faith
11 fans of this quote   

"Since when was genius found respectable?"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on genius
3 fans of this quote   

"We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on goodness
3 fans of this quote   

"The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on happiness
3 fans of this quote   

"Who so loves believes the impossible."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on love
20 fans of this quote   

"You can't create experience. You must undergo it."

Camus, Albert on experience
4 fans of this quote   

"Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world."

Butler, Samuel on experience
3 fans of this quote   

"I reached in experience the nirvana which is unborn, unrivalled, secure from attachment, undecaying and unstained. This condition is indeed reached by me which is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, tranquil, excellent, beyond the reach of mere logic, subtle, and to be realized only by the wise."

Buddha on experience
6 fans of this quote   

"My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed.... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is."

Augustine, St. on experience   

"We can not do great things. We can only do little things with great love."

Mother Teresa on things and little things
11 fans of this quote   

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the end, it is between you and HIM not you and them."

Mother Teresa on
14 fans of this quote   

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on achievement
191 fans of this quote   

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on love
28 fans of this quote   

"Books succeed, and lives fail."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on books - reading
7 fans of this quote   

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

Einstein, Albert on experience
28 fans of this quote   

"Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe."

Augustine, St. on faith
29 fans of this quote   

"May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?"

Auden, W. H. on faith
18 fans of this quote   

"Her eyes are homes of silent prayers."

Tennyson, Lord Alfred on eyes
8 fans of this quote