Emil Cioran Quotes

As the saying goes, I want to be the best-looking corpse there is.

When we practice dying, we are learning to identify less with Ego and more with Soul

Transcendence gets you beyond ego. If you go beyond ego, you see all of this in a more decent perspective and you can start to put all the pieces together. We haven't done that yet. Not as a civilization.

You need your ego to survive in the three-dimensional world, but you need only that part of the ego which processes information. The rest - pride, arrogance, defensiveness, fear - is worse than useless. The rest of the ego separates you from wisdom, joy, and God.

He who knows himself well is mean and abject in his own sight, and takes no delight in the vain praise of men.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

Is there any vanity greater than the vanity of those who believe themselves without it?

The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.

In my younger years my dedication may have expressed itself egotistically.

At the solemn moment of death, every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life.

I never saw movies I was in because my mom told me that would be prideful, being stuck on yourself.

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Some nights, I was so good that I could have become an egotist.

The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

From compassion springs humility. The ego is verily a gateway to hell. The person who is egoistic is far from being religious.

To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault and I have no faults.

Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.

I think I'm better than all the people who are trying to reform me.

All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.