Emile Quotes

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Each implementation of human effort, however minute the overall result may be, is summed up in the gesture of the sower - sometimes an awe-inspiring gesture. ~ Emile Galle

Society: an inferno of saviors! ~ Emile M. Cioran

"The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad. ~ Emile M. Cioran

For a few moments, raising his arms desperately, the Reverend Mouret implored Heaven. His shoulder-blades cracked, with such fantastic force did he pray. But soon enough his arms fell to his sides, his hopes abashed. From heaven came one of those silences utterly void of hope known to the devout. ~ Emile Zola

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it. ~ Emile Durkheim

Under each formula lies a corpse. ~ Emile M. Cioran

The shelves had the melancholy emptiness and the false luxury of families where inferior meat is purchased, so as to be able to put flowers on the table. ~ Emile Zola

What will be the death of me are buillabaisses, food spiced with pimiento, shellfish, and a load of exquisite rubbish which I eat in disproportionate quantities. ~ Emile Zola

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Your power play can win you games, and your penalty killers can save you games. ~ Emile Francis

an insane love for nudity desired but never possessed (42) ~ Emile Zola

He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where everything was sold, masses and souls alike! ~ Emile Zola

I have only one thing to say to the melancholy man: 'Look into the distance.' ... When you look at the stars or the ocean's expanse, your eye is completely relaxed; once your eye is relaxed, your mind is unfettered. ~ Emile Chartier

Like Anaximander, [Anaxagoras] believed that everything emerged from something indeterminate and confused; but he added that what caused the emergence from that state was the organizing intelligence, the Mind, just as in man, it is the intelligence which draws thought from cerebral undulations, and forms a clear idea out of a confused idea. ~ Emile Faguet

The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she had to soil them too. ~ Emile Zola

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day. ~ Emile Zola

It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls on all fours, with her rear in the air and her buttocks busting out of her breeches. ~ Emile Zola

Emile was not like you, not attached to houses. For you, houses are like people, are they not, they have a soul, a heart, they live and breathe. Houses remember. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

such a strange look of repugnance and horror ~ Emile Zola

What is a thousand years? Time is short for one who thinks, endless for one who yearns. ~ Emile Chartier

Imagining themes that are specific to coating lines, shapes, shades, thoughts, the decoration of our homes and the objects of utility or pure pleasure, adapting its purpose in a material-specific way to metal or wood, marble or fabric - it is, without any doubt, an absorbing occupation. ~ Emile Galle

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words. ~ Emile M. Cioran

In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end. ~ Emile Zola

Every idea I get I have to deny, that's my way of testing it. ~ Emile Chartier

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away. ~ Emile M. Cioran

A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy. ~ Emile Zola

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness. ~ Emile M. Cioran

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here ~ Emile Zola

All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude. ~ Emile M. Cioran

We want to do for 'Hamlet' what Baz Luhrmann did for 'Romeo and Juliet' in terms of like a really cool kind of re-imagining. ~ Emile Hirsch

He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes. ~ Emile Zola

Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like. ~ Emile Zola

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. ~ Emile M. Cioran

All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue. ~ Emile Zola

Albine now yielded to him, and Serge possessed her.
And the whole garden was engulfed together with the couple in one last cry of love's passion. The tree-trunks bent as under a powerful wind. The blades of grass emitted sobs of intoxication. The flowers, fainting, lips half-open, breathed out their souls. The sky itself, aflame with the setting of the great star, held its clouds motionless, faint with love, whence superhuman rapture fell. And it was the victory of all the wild creatures, all plants and all things natural, which willed the entry of these two children into the eternity of life. ~ Emile Zola

Our first intuitions are the true ones. ~ Emile M. Cioran

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed. ~ Emile M. Cioran

A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect. ~ Emile M. Cioran

The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, With emotion, to the man I used to be. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century. Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last, would thus gallop along the roads, making the blood of the middle class flow, parading severed heads and sprinkling gold from disembowelled coffers. The women would yell, the men would have those wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes, the same rags, the same thunder of great sabots, the same terrible troop, with dirty skins and tainted breath, sweeping away the old world beneath an overflowing flood of barbarians. ~ Emile Zola

Social man...is the masterpiece of existence. ~ Emile Durkheim

The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it's robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It's like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I've even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I'm chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It's so extremely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it's impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I'm asleep. ... Outside that, nothing, nobody exists. ~ Emile Zola

This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality ... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it ... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life. ~ Emile Durkheim

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes. ~ Emile M. Cioran

An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature. ~ Emile Durkheim

It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss. ~ Emile Durkheim

As to acknowledging that he was about to obtain a triumph with the ideas of another man, he never thought of such a thing. It is generally in perfect good faith that the jackdaw struts about in the peacock's feathers. ~ Emile Gaboriau

I have watched him as only a woman can watch a man upon whom her fate depends, but it has always been in vain. ~ Emile Gaboriau

The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought. ~ Emile Coue

Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. ~ Emile Coue

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand. ~ Emile Durkheim

She made one instinctive effort to resist and then yielded, slipping down on to the floor. Not a single word was exchanged. The act was silent and brutal ~ Emile Zola

The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more. ~ Emile Zola

Life in the silent, secluded little mansion in Passy was as smooth and regular as the gentle ticking of its antiquated clocks. (89) ~ Emile Zola

The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost. ~ Emile M. Cioran

The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are sometimes fruitful. ~ Emile M. Cioran

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men. ~ Emile Zola

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable. ~ Emile Durkheim

For a moment he [Doctor Pascal] thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood. ~ Emile Zola

Oh yeah, I'm the president of the lucky club. There are so many talented people who don't work. And the crop of young actors I'm surrounded by is incredible. When you have people like that around you it amps you up a little bit. Also, Emile Hirsch and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or guys like Ryan Gosling. It's a really good crowd and I feel I'm coming up at a good time. But equally, there's a lot of good young actors who don't get to work who are more talented than I. I'm just lucky. ~ Shia Labeouf

Hence we are the victims of an illusion which leads us to believe we have ourselves produced what has been imposed upon us externally. ~ Emile Durkheim

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy. ~ Emile Zola

After a time, she believed in the reality of this comedy ~ Emile Zola

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty. ~ Emile M. Cioran

I've realized that what you think of when you make a 'big movie,' if it's actually a green screen movie, it's like doing independent New York theater because you don't have any backgrounds or props. So it's kind of like making the lowest budgeted film you could possibly imagine, plus $100 million. ~ Emile Hirsch

Alas! we must suffer ourselves before we can feel for others. ~ Emile Gaboriau

As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of being strong. ~ Emile Zola

From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. ~ Emile Zola

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. ~ Emile Durkheim

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Satin occupied a couple of rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to rescue her from the clutches of the police; but in little over a year she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs and dirtied the curtains in such a frenzy of filth and disorder that the two rooms looked as if they were inhabited by a pack of mad cats. ~ Emile Zola

Rich is he who thinks he is rich and poor is he who thinks he is poor. ~ Emile Coue

My mission is to see things as they are. Exactly contrary of a mission. ~ Emile M. Cioran

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws. ~ Emile M. Cioran

I don't understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Whoever makes an attempt on a man's life, on a man's liberty, on a man's honour inspires us with a feeling of horror in every way analogous to that which the believer experiences when he sees his idol profaned. ~ Emile Durkheim

The vision that had emerged from the invisible was returning to the invisible. It was no more an appearance that was fading away, having created an illusion. All is but a dream. And, at the peak of happiness, Angélique had vanished, in the faint breath of a kiss. ~ Emile Zola

The liberal professions, and in a wider sense the well-to-do classes, are certainly those with the liveliest taste for knowledge and the most active intellectual life. ~ Emile Durkheim

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. ~ Emile M. Cioran

In the United States, France, and most other countries, talk about the virtues of the national meritocratic model is seldom based on close examination of the facts. Often the purpose is to justify existing inequalities while ignoring the sometimes patent failures of the current system. In 1872, Emile Boutmy created Sciences Po with a clear mission in mind: "obliged to submit to the rule of the majority, the classes that call themselves the upper classes can preserve their political hegemony only by invoking the rights of the most capable. As traditional upper-class prerogatives crumble, the wave of democracy will encounter a second rampart, built on eminently useful talents, superiority that commands prestige, and abilities of which society cannot sanely deprive itself. ~ Thomas Piketty

Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Patience and perseverance are necessary in autosuggestion, as well as in everything else. ~ Emile Coue

The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things. ~ Emile Durkheim

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Christians are free to serve and obey God since they are loved, justified, redeemed, reconciled, forgiven, saved, and sustained to the end! ~ Ibrahim Emile

I say to myself: Who are you to measure infinite power? ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who are upset about something ruminate on it whenever they get a chance; they are constantly drawn back to their own unhappy tale as if it were a horror story left open on a table. ~ Emile Chartier

With his mouth open, he gave off that alcoholic smell that you get from an old brandy cask when you take out the bung. ~ Emile Zola

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time. ~ Emile M. Cioran

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism. ~ Emile M. Cioran

We must recognize the eloquence of our passions and refuse to be taken in. Instead of saying, 'That false friend always did despise me,' say: 'In my present state of agitation, I can't see clearly, I can't judge clearly; I am only a tragic actor who is declaiming for his own ears.' Then you will see the lights in the theater go out for lack of an audience, and the brilliant sets will be nothing more than painted cardboard. ~ Emile Chartier

Basis of society: anonymous sweat. ~ Emile M. Cioran

I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest, to make money they don't want, to buy things they don't need, to impress people they don't like. - Emile ~ Erin Loechner

An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl. ~ Emile Zola

I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty. ~ Emile Durkheim