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
If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that unexplained feelings of depression may indicate a deeper, lifelong struggle with sadness that goes unnoticed.
Emile M. Cioran's quote reflects on the nature of depression, emphasizing that even brief instances of feeling depressed without any clear cause can reveal a chronic state of unhappiness. It implies that many people may live their lives unaware of a pervasive sense of despair that influences their thoughts and actions, suggesting a need for self-examination and acknowledgment of oneβs emotional state.
In practice
Using this quote during a mental health awareness seminar to highlight the importance of recognizing one's emotional state.
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.
Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans - I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment.
Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom.
There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
To be ourselves we must have ourselves β possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must βrecollectβ ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.
Freedom is a timeless value. The United Nations Charter calls for encouraging respect for fundamental freedoms. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions freedom more than twenty times. All countries have committed to protecting individual freedoms on paper - but in practice, too many break their pledge.
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