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
Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the pain of existence and the longing for a deeper understanding of life and death.
In this quote, Emile M. Cioran expresses a profound sense of suffering associated with the act of speaking and existing in the human condition. He contrasts this pain with a yearning to hear the more serene and perhaps enlightening perspective of nature, represented by flowers, on the inevitability of death, suggesting that nature may offer a wisdom and acceptance that humanity struggles to achieve.
In practice
In a memorial speech, one might use this quote to highlight the beauty of nature in discussing the concept of death.
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.
We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.
There was a time when time did not yet exist. β¦ The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
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.
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are." - John Gault
Who is there that can adequately gauge the greatness of the humility, gentleness, self-surrender, revealed by the Lord of majesty in assuming human nature, in accepting the punishment of death, the shame of the cross?
Here in Britain, black people are disproportionately targeted, arrested and imprisoned for drug offences, while organised and violent crime are granted a massive source of revenue.
It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.
Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.
The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.
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