The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.
Emile M. CioranRead
Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the detrimental impact of humanity on the environment and the world.
Emile M. Cioran uses vivid imagery to lament the destructive growth of human civilization, likening it to a cancer that harms the Earth. The quote suggests a sense of urgency and despair about the relentless expansion of humanity at the expense of nature, condemning human progress as synonymous with ecological devastation.
Themes
HumanityNatureDestructionCancerEnvironment
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about environmental degradation, this quote can highlight the impact of urbanization on nature.
More from Emile M. Cioran
All quotes →We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.
Emile M. CioranRead
There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
Emile M. CioranRead
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
Emile M. CioranRead
Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.
Emile M. CioranRead
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
Emile M. CioranRead
Similar quotes
People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.
Wendell BerryRead
Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.
DiogenesRead
I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.
Charles BukowskiRead
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef PieperRead
Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.
Ray BradburyRead
Nothing is confused except the mind.
Rene MagritteRead