Bradatan, Costica (28 November 2016). "The Philosopher of Failure: Emil Cioran's Heights of Despair". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 8 January 2018. Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it's all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one's sadness and delight in one's joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don't need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is loss, all loss is gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.

a b Ioan T. Morar, "Cronică de lângă teatre. A făcut Emil Cioran karate?", in Academia Cațavencu, 45/2007, p.30 La Tentation d'exister ("The Temptation to Exist"), Gallimard 1956 | English edition: ISBN 978-0-226-10675-5 I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to empty abstraction. Cioran is a kind of 20th century, Romanian Nietzsche who “denounced systematic thought and abstract speculation in favor of indulgence in personal reflection and passionate lyricism.” Ornea, Z. (1995). Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească. Bucharest: Fundației Culturale Române. ISBN 973-9155-43-X. OCLC 33346781.

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Aphorisms make up a large portion of Cioran's bibliography, and some of his books, such as The Trouble with Being Born, are composed entirely of aphorisms. Speaking about this decision, Cioran said: Compared to the refined culture of sclerotic forms and frames, which mask everything, the lyrical mode is utterly barbarian in its expression. Its value resides precisely in its savage quality: it is only blood, sincerity, and fire. The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life. What happens when indirection fails and the tangent of my life, for once, not only touches but crosses this moment?

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason. The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity... Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore. Cioran, Emil (1992) [Originally published in 1934]. On the Heights of Despair. Translated by Zarifopol-Johnston, Ilinca. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226106717.

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The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness. To detach yourself elegantly from the world; to give contour and grace to sadness; a solitude in style; a walk that gives cadence to memories; stepping towards the intangible; with the breath in the trembling margins of things; the past reborn in the overflow of fragrances; the smell, through which we conquer time; the contour of the invisible things; the forms of the immaterial; to deepen yourself in the intangible; to touch the world airborne by smell; aerial dialogue and gliding dissolution; to bathe in your own reflecting fragmentation... Although Cioran focuses on negative emotions and gives contrarian opinions, he also considers certain positive emotions and expresses more conventional views rejecting certain negative states, although these rejections have an anti-Christian content. Innocence and grace are described as positive states, although Cioran's grace is more secular and aesthetic, as opposed to the religious sense of the English word. [7] Although he praises the heightened emotions which suffering can induce, Cioran explicitly rejects poverty and suffering themselves as purely destructive states which have none of the nobility or catharsis which Christianity confers upon them.

On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran’s first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

Reference

Cioran had a good command of German, learning the language at an early age, and proceeded to read philosophy that was available in German, but not in Romanian. Notes from Cioran's adolescence indicated a study of Friedrich Nietzsche, Honoré de Balzac, Arthur Schopenhauer and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. [3] He became an agnostic, taking as an axiom "the inconvenience of existence". While at the University, he was influenced by Georg Simmel, Ludwig Klages and Martin Heidegger, but also by the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov, whose contribution to Cioran's central system of thought was the belief that life is arbitrary. Cioran's graduation thesis was on Henri Bergson, whom he later rejected, claiming Bergson did not comprehend the tragedy of life. [ citation needed] The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran’s short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."— Publishers Weekly, starred review Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often.