If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.

Aphorisms make up a large portion of Cioran's bibliography, and some of his books, such as The Trouble with Being Born, are composed entirely of aphorisms. Speaking about this decision, Cioran said: Cioran revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid". In its original form, the book expressed sympathy for totalitarianism, [13] a view which was also present in various articles Cioran wrote at the time, [14] and which aimed to establish " urbanization and industrialization" as "the two obsessions of a rising people". [15]Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands? Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often. The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.

But, in the end, I find him too melodramatic, too Romantic. Perhaps this is inevitable given that I am comfortable, happily employed, well-fed, in excellent health, and in love with my wife. Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures. There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons — moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on — no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing. Thanks to depression — that alpinism of the indolent — we scale every summit and daydream over every precipice from our bed.

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After returning from Berlin in 1936, Cioran taught philosophy at the Andrei Șaguna High School in Brașov for a year. In 1937, he left for Paris with a scholarship from the French Institute branch in Bucharest, which was then prolonged until 1944. After a short stay in his home country (November 1940 – February 1941), Cioran never returned again. [21] This last period in Romania was the one in which he exhibited a closer relationship with the Iron Guard, which by then had taken power ( see National Legionary State). On 28 November, for the state-owned Romanian Radio, Cioran recorded a speech centered on the portrait of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, former leader of the movement, praising him and the Guard for, among other things, "having given Romanians a purpose". [22]

I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night. What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?

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Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears. The skepticism which fails to contribute to the ruin of our health is merely an intellectual exercise.