E. M. Cioran, All Gall Is Divided: The Aphorisms of a Legendary Iconoclast, translated from the French and introduced by Richard Howard (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999, 2012) ("In the days when the Devil flourished, panics, terrors, troubles were evils profiting from supernatural protection: we know who provoked them, who presided over their efflorescence; abandoned to themselves now, they become 'internal dramas' or degenerate into 'psychoses,' a secularized pathology. Id. at 24.).
E. M. Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations, translated from the French by Richard Howard, foreword by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991, 2012) ("One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland--and no other." Id. at 12. "to love one's neighbor is inconceivable. Does one ask a virus to love another virus?" Id. at 88. "The older one grows, the more clearly one realizes that though one believes oneself liberated from everything, in reality one is liberated from nothing." Id. at 194-195.).
E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, translated from the French by Richard Howard, foreword by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1983, 2012) (From "Stabs at Bewilderment": "The only profound thinkers are the ones who do not suffer form a sense of the ridiculous." Id. at 131. "If we had an infallible perception of what we are, we might have just enough courage to go to bed, but certainly not enough to get up." Id. at 147.)
E. M. Cioran, History and Utopia (1969), translated from the French by Richard Howard, foreword by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1987, 2015) (From the back cover: "In History and Utopia, Cioran the monster writes of politics in its broadest sense, of history, and of the utopian dream. His views are, to say the least, provocative. In one essay he casts a scathing look at democracy, that 'festival of mediocrity'; in another he turns his uncompromising gaze on Russia, its history, its evolution, and what calls 'the virtues of liberty.' In the dark shadow of Stalin and Hitler, he writes of tyrants and tyranny with rare lucidity and convincing logic. In "Odyssey of Rancor," he examines the deep-rooted dream in all of us to 'hate our neighbors,' to take immediate and irremediable revenge. And, in the final essay, he analyzes the notion of the 'golden age,' the biblical Eden, the utopia of so many poets and thinkers.").
E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay (1949), translated from the French by Richard Howard, foreword by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1975, 2012) ("True knowledge comes down to vigils in the darkness: the sum of our insomnias alone distinguishes us from the animals and from our kind. What rich or strange idea was ever the work of a sleeper? Is your sleep sound? Are your dreams sweet? You swell the anonymous crowd. Daylight is hostile to thoughts, the sun blocks them out; they flourish only in the middle of the night. . . . Conclusion of nocturnal knowledge: every man who arrives at a reassuring conclusion about anything at all gives evidence of imbecility or false charity. Who ever found a single joyous truth which was valid? Who saved the honor of the intellectual with daylight utterance? Happy the man who can say to himself: 'Knowledge turned sour on me.'" Id. at 147.).
E. M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist, translated from the French and introduced by Richard Howard, introduction by Susan Sontag, forwarded by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1956, 2012).
E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born (1949), translated from the French by Richard Howard, foreword by Eugene Thacker (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1976, 2012) ("Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone." Id. at 27. "No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it is so. Then why celebrate or denigrate? Because to exist is to evaluate, to emit judgments, and because abstention, when it is not the effect of apathy or cowardice, requires an effort no one manages to make." Id. at 51.)
