FastSaying

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.


E. M. Forster

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; ...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Vulgarity is the rich man's modest contribution to democracy.
ANONYMOUS As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace i...
ALISTAIR COOKE It is an immense loss to have all robust and sustaining expletives refined away from one! At. momen...
ALICE JAMES There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close.
BARBARA STANWYCK Expressions of disapproval are on a level of vulgarity that cannot be tolerated. The way to express ...
RUDOLF BING Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.
OSCAR WILDE Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people
OSCAR WILDE Think with the wise, but talk with the vulgar.
GREEK PROVERB By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin...
SOLOMON SCHECHTER No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime
OSCAR WILDE Vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.
DORIS DAY The use of a two syllable vulgarity by the chairman was rather ambitious,
MIKE MCCURRY I think the vulgarity of it shouldn't have been directed at anyone.
MAURICE WILSON Your race is a gift from G-D. Your culture is a gift from mankind. Your character is a gift from you...
TROY J. GAINEY Television is a corporate vulgarity
JOHN LEONARD I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
MEL BROOKS Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any ...
IAIN PEARS Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER Television is a corporate vulgarity.
JOHN LEONARD Above all, I dislike vulgarity.
DIANE KRUGER People need to be peppered or even outraged occasionally. Our national comedy and drama is packed wi...
KENNETH WILLIAMS Where I used to think that this life would be good. And I would do things that I thought that I shou...
SOMETHING CORPORATE [He appreciated its] compounded vulgarity, ... It had that Peter Finch in 'Network,' 'I'm mad as hel...
GEORGE CARLIN Passionless is vulgar ("Metier: Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka")
WILLIAM S. WILSON Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing
OSCAR WILDE Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Camp is popularity plus vulgarity plus innocence.
INDRA JAHALANI Good taste is death; vulgarity is life.
MARY QUANT America is a model of force and freedom and moderation -- with all the coarseness and rudeness of it...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON America is a model of force and freedom and moderation - with all the coarseness and rudeness of its...
LORD BYRON How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
E.M. FORSTER I believe in aristocracy, though -- if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an ...
E.M. FORSTER I think Australians like a bit of vulgarity.
JULIAN CLARY Vulgarity is the rich man's modest contribution to democracy.
SOURCE UNKNOWN Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.
NATHANIEL P. WILLIS Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste.
CYRIL CONNOLLY Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.
CYRIL CONNOLLY Vulgarity of manners defiles fine garments more than mud.
UNKNOWN I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulga...
COCO CHANEL Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken.
WILLIAM HAZLITT There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It...
JOHN RUSKIN Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness....
DANNY MEYER We are of the view that Indian movies spread obscenity and vulgarity. These (Indian) movies cannot b...
LIAQUAT BALOCH A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, he
admired in othe...
ANNE BRONTë It's not that I'm easily shocked. It takes a lot to shock me. And wildness I like. But vulga...
FRANCOIS NARS You've got to make a distinction between something that affects a few versus something that affects ...
MARC SIEGEL By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin...
SOLOMON SCHECHTER What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness, roughness -- delicacy, coarseness -- sentiment, sensuality...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness, roughness -- delicacy, coarseness -- sentiment, sensuality...
LORD BYRON Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
OSCAR WILDE Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
OSCAR WILDE There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined
MARK TWAIN Shut up with the backtalk, because if I wanted lip from you, I'd sit on your face
L.A. CASEY Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
DAME EDITH SITWELL Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
EDITH SITWELL Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people.
OSCAR WILDE The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.
JOHN CHO Coarseness occurs in a land where platitude inflames this sense of entitlement to more of almost eve...
GEORGE F. WILL Looking deeply" means observing something or someone with so much concentration that the distinction...
THICH NHAT HANH Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
COCO CHANEL Noticed that life does sway, coarseness which carves its way, this earth, soon will fade away, there...
YTHAM REIJAN ROSELITTLE COOGEIL As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it...
ALISTAIR COOKE I love British cursing - the cadence of it, the joy in the sound of the words, and the vulgarity of ...
CHRISTOPHER MOORE Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in th...
DAMON GALGUT Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste
RALPH WALDO EMERSON The "masters" have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded wit...
STEVEN BOCHCO It's only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdy that you can ...
LAWRENCE DURRELL There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment. They show off too much and try too h...
ROBERTO CAVALLI His stoicism, his positive attitude and dark humor was something that was very truthful.
ALEX STEYERMARK Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity- these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the hig...
MARK TWAIN Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artis...
QUENTIN CRISP A paper product was concealing his face.
SCOTT MENDES ... Corellian curses being a synergistic blend of vulgarity, obscenity, and outright blasphemy that ...
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER The chemistry between us was just something very, very special, which lasted throughout our lives.
MARK LESTER If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefe...
WERNER HERZOG Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
OSCAR WILDE I learned a strange thing... that in a jumble of unintelligible talk, the word "nigger" leaps out wi...
JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
RICHARD FEYNMAN We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive a...
JEREMY CLARKSON As scientific research demonstrates, llama wool's very coarseness and its range of fibers from f...
DAVID ROBERTS The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of...
RAYMOND CHANDLER [Rudolph Valentino was] what is commonly called for want of a better name, a gentleman. In brief, Va...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel th...
KATHERINE MANSFIELD I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral backgr...
CHRIS PATTEN From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point...
OSCAR WILDE Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses...
OSCAR WILDE Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inabilit...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, th...
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call them...
DAMIAN LEWIS I'm going for something very raw and organic.
HALEY REINHART There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If somet...
LUCIAN FREUD For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who ne...
C.S. LEWIS The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the firs...
JHUMPA LAHIRI This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, ...
CHRISTOPHER MOORE The silence between us was profound. I thought it was his job to say something. Only now do I unders...
DAVID HARE

More E. M. Forster

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for...
E. M. FORSTER We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. FORSTER What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our d...
E. M. FORSTER To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the ...
E. M. FORSTER History develops, art stands still.
E. M. FORSTER How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. FORSTER I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E. M. FORSTER Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
E. M. FORSTER We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
E. M. FORSTER The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in...
E. M. FORSTER Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. FORSTER Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. FORSTER Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to l...
E. M. FORSTER Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. FORSTER Love is always being given where it is not required.
E. M. FORSTER The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in...
E. M. FORSTER Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E. M. FORSTER I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
E. M. FORSTER A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing ...
E. M. FORSTER The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should ...
E. M. FORSTER Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him.
E. M. FORSTER The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of an...
E. M. FORSTER Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. FORSTER Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. FORSTER We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the stat...
E. M. FORSTER Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTER America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be inter...
E. M. FORSTER There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one d...
E. M. FORSTER Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who ...
E. M. FORSTER Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both wil...
E. M. FORSTER Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves...
E. M. FORSTER I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people...
E. M. FORSTER Ideas are fatal to caste.
E. M. FORSTER Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orde...
E. M. FORSTER Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wr...
E. M. FORSTER As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through e...
E. M. FORSTER Oxford is -- Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates t...
E. M. FORSTER Lord I disbelieve -- help thou my unbelief.
E. M. FORSTER Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when...
E. M. FORSTER Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sp...
E. M. FORSTER I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too,...
E. M. FORSTER The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will ...
E. M. FORSTER A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy d...
E. M. FORSTER Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is neg...
E. M. FORSTER The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
E. M. FORSTER If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the gu...
E. M. FORSTER Another distinguished critic has agreed with Gide--that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by ...
E. M. FORSTER At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
E. M. FORSTER Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. FORSTER Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality...
E. M. FORSTER Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of...
E. M. FORSTER The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the ...
E. M. FORSTER Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage ou...
E. M. FORSTER One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. FORSTER I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gon...
E. M. FORSTER They go too far because they do not reflect what personality is. Just as words have two functions - ...
E. M. FORSTER I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my frie...
E. M. FORSTER Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. FORSTER I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
E. M. FORSTER But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
E. M. FORSTER Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order...
E. M. FORSTER We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a n...
E. M. FORSTER Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventu...
E. M. FORSTER Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
E. M. FORSTER So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. FORSTER There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.
E. M. FORSTER Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
E. M. FORSTER Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of ma...
E. M. FORSTER Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.
E. M. FORSTER Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
E. M. FORSTER What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the cond...
E. M. FORSTER . . . the crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behi...
E. M. FORSTER Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageab...
E. M. FORSTER Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothin...
E. M. FORSTER Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the ...
E. M. FORSTER Life -- No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
E. M. FORSTER I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it ...
E. M. FORSTER Only connect.
E. M. FORSTER The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
E. M. FORSTER Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what t...
E. M. FORSTER So, Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism
E. M. FORSTER It is the one orderly product our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels,...
E. M. FORSTER There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playi...
E. M. FORSTER They go forth with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undevelo...
E. M. FORSTER I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gon...
E. M. FORSTER Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that shoul...
E. M. FORSTER The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little fart...
E. M. FORSTER I have been racking my brains and can find no reply [to] this very reasonable question. I can only s...
E. M. FORSTER A facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade, every type of dubiousness.
E. M. FORSTER I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people...
E. M. FORSTER For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge tha...
E. M. FORSTER The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
E. M. FORSTER The best way to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly
E. M. FORSTER Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
E. M. FORSTER If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.
E. M. FORSTER This opera is my Nunc Dimittis, in that it dismisses me peacefully and convinces me I have achieved.
E. M. FORSTER You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be f...
E. M. FORSTER But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to mer...
E. M. FORSTER Unless we remember we cannot understand
E. M. FORSTER It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the...
E. M. FORSTER The so-called white races are really pinko-grey
E. M. FORSTER I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me...
E. M. FORSTER I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
E. M. FORSTER At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes
E. M. FORSTER Away she hurried, not beautiful, not supremely brilliant, but filled with something that took the pl...
E. M. FORSTER Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's
E. M. FORSTER Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already lost--no...
E. M. FORSTER You can transmute love, muddle it, ignore it... but you can never pull it out of you...
E. M. FORSTER Ideas are fatal to caste
E. M. FORSTER Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.
E. M. FORSTER Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who ...
E. M. FORSTER It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.
E. M. FORSTER Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.
E. M. FORSTER One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
E. M. FORSTER Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
E. M. FORSTER England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
E. M. FORSTER I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and...
E. M. FORSTER Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. FORSTER Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.
E. M. FORSTER One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such exp...
E. M. FORSTER People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, ...
E. M. FORSTER No one is India.
E. M. FORSTER The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herse...
E. M. FORSTER I am certainly an ought and not a must.
E. M. FORSTER It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
E. M. FORSTER The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that ...
E. M. FORSTER The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
E. M. FORSTER Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
E. M. FORSTER The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. FORSTER No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.
E. M. FORSTER Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
E. M. FORSTER At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.
E. M. FORSTER The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E. M. FORSTER I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too,...
E. M. FORSTER The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a p...
E. M. FORSTER One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. FORSTER Some closing of the gates is inevitable after thirty, if the mind itself is to become a creative pow...
E. M. FORSTER I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it ...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; ...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Lord I disbelieve -- help thou my unbelief.
EDWARD M. FORSTER Unless we remember we cannot understand.
EDWARD M. FORSTER Ideas are fatal to caste.
EDWARD M. FORSTER Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage ou...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when...
EDWARD M. FORSTER At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
EDWARD M. FORSTER The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the ...
EDWARD M. FORSTER Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
E. M. CIORAN The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.
E. M. CIORAN If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
E. M. CIORAN The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, 'Go!' - a leader says, 'Let's go!'
E. M. KELLY One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland --and n...
E. M. CIORAN Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people...
E. M. CIORAN A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its se...
E. M. CIORAN Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal ther...
E. M. CIORAN Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
E. M. CIORAN A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals h...
E. M. CIORAN Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will...
E. M. BOUNDS Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations ...
E. M. CIORAN Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
E. M. CIORAN To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
E. M. CIORAN Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untain...
E. M. CIORAN A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
E. M. CIORAN God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
E. M. CIORAN Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent --unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaus...
E. M. CIORAN What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striv...
E. M. CIORAN Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.
E. M. CIORAN When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances,...
E. M. CIORAN It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
E. M. CIORAN The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose atte...
E. M. CIORAN Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not fi...
E. M. CIORAN Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ours...
E. M. CIORAN Those who believe in their truth -- the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men -- ...
E. M. CIORAN What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
E. M. CIORAN Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.
E. M. CIORAN Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist --a demo...
E. M. CIORAN Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
E. M. CIORAN No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are ...
E. M. CIORAN We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
E. M. CIORAN The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, th...
E. M. CIORAN Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than...
E. M. CIORAN The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.
E. M. CIORAN Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
E. M. CIORAN To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.
E. M. CIORAN No one can keep his grieves in their prime; they use themselves up.
E. M. CIORAN The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for on...
E. M. CIORAN Sperm is a bandit in its pure state.
E. M. CIORAN We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone wo...
E. M. CIORAN The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, 'Go!' -a leader says, 'Let's go!'.
E. M. KELLY Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
E. M. CIORAN Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with o...
E. M. CIORAN Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal the...
E. M. CIORAN The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for on...
E. M. CIORAN Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encount...
E. M. CIORAN Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal ther...
E. M. CIORAN Earnestness is good and impressive: genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it...
E. M. BOUNDS Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of devotion is the spirit of pr...
E. M. BOUNDS We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, th...
E. M. BOUNDS Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
E. M. CIORAN There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.
E. M. CIORAN