A Short History of Decay (Penguin Modern Classics)

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He was a Romanian philosopher and I’ve known about him since I was a teenager, but I haven’t read any of his books. Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable.

The idle apprehend more things, are deeper than the industrious: no task limits their horizon; born into an eternal Sunday, they watch-—and watch themselves watching. The man who has not given himself up to the pleasures of anguish, who has not savored in his mind the dangers of his own extinction nor relished such cruel and sweet annihilations, will never be cured of the obsession with death: he will be tormented by it, for he will have resisted it; while the man who, habituated to a discipline of horror, and meditating upon his own carrion, has deliberately reduced himself to ashes—that man will look toward death’s past, and he himself will be merely a resurrected being who can no longer live. The controversies of men, the hurricanes of history—in her eyes, trifles: her sickness alone prevailed over time and space. Books by him: History and Utopia (1960), The Fall into Time (1964), The Trouble with being Born (1973), Exercices d’admiration (1986).For those given to viewing the world through rose-colored spectacles Cioran provides a powerful antidote.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humor, and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Nostalgia for a world without “ideals,” for an agony without doctrine, for an eternity without life . Born in the small Romanian village of Ràsinari in 1911, Cioran attended university in Bucharest, where he discovered the works of Pascal and Nietzsche.