A Thread for Posting Brutally Pessimistic Quotes by Anguished Philosophers

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This is possibly my favorite thread ever.

― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Saturday, 14 January 2006 22:42 (twenty years ago)

Damn. I wish I had a copy of Journey to the End of the Night with me. There's at least one on every page.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Sunday, 15 January 2006 16:12 (twenty years ago)

This Cioran dude sounds awful. I've never understood philosophies (like Buddhism) that basically say life ain't worth living. Stop breathing then! Me, I'd rather eat and fuck and dream and love as long as I have the chance.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 15 January 2006 16:30 (twenty years ago)

I'm with you Tuomas. A remedy to those morbid lamentations is hedonism, the art of despising death.

― S. (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 15 January 2006 16:38 (twenty years ago)

Hedonism is a morbid lamentation.

― That I Could Clamber to the Frozen Moon and Draw the Ladder (Freud Junior), Sunday, 15 January 2006 21:12 (twenty years ago)

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
Emile M. Cioran

― ratty, Sunday, 15 January 2006 21:23 (twenty years ago)

Hedonism is a morbid lamentation.

Ha! worthy of the man himself.

― ryan (ryan), Sunday, 15 January 2006 21:28 (twenty years ago)

No man is worthy of anything.

― That I Could Clamber to the Frozen Moon and Draw the Ladder (Freud Junior), Sunday, 15 January 2006 22:39 (twenty years ago)

"I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on" Samuel Beckett in 'The Unnameable"

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Sunday, 15 January 2006 22:46 (twenty years ago)

There's a published collection of R. Crumb's letters entitled "Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me."

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, 15 January 2006 22:50 (twenty years ago)

And a poem by Leonard Cohen called 'I'm fucking the dead ones now'.

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Sunday, 15 January 2006 22:52 (twenty years ago)

http://www.kaleobill.com/archives/1997_wt_sept_1_23_large.jpg
http://www.kaleobill.com/archives/2003_learn_from_great_teacher_p243.jpg

― S. (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 15 January 2006 22:55 (twenty years ago)

two weeks pass...

In November 1933, Cioran won a Humboldt doctoral grant to Berlin, where he quickly became a fan of Hitler. "I am absolutely enthralled by the political order they've set up here," he wrote to his friend Mircea Eliade, the future historian of religion, whose 1930s fascism and anti-Semitism also emerged most prominently after his death. "Some of our friends," Cioran advised pal Petru Comarnescu, "will believe that I've turned Hitlerist out of sheer opportunism. The truth is that I agree with many of the things I've seen here."

Nazism, Cioran wrote, possessed "greatness." Germans had a "need for a Führer," and Hitlerism constituted "a destiny for Germany." Cioran supported a similar dictatorship for his country and believed that "only terror, brutality, and endless anxiety are likely to bring about a change in Romania. All Romanians should be arrested and beaten to a pulp; this is the only way a shallow nation could make a name for itself." "Hitler's merit," insisted the young voice of vitalist barbarism, "consists in depriving his nation of a critical spirit."

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=xzm8107fnyrw9nnrr3p3cwbm3mc04n21

― ,,, Tuesday, 31 January 2006 15:06 (twenty years ago)

seven months pass...

The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have ceased being so-- with the ex-naïve. Calmed down at last, they have taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge-- that impersonal version of disappointment.

― and what (ooo), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:05 (nineteen years ago)

life ain't nothing but bitches and money

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:09 (nineteen years ago)

Unfortunately, I can't really abide staring at exceptionally beautiful women. The agony and torment of sexually desiring something one can never (rationally) hope to have is something I can never cope with.

-sorry, everyone :(

― Space Gourmand (Haberdager), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:26 (nineteen years ago)

Ye are not eagles: thus have ye never experienced the happiness of
the alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should not camp
above abysses.

― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:31 (nineteen years ago)

One day it was announced by Master Joshu that the young monk Kyogen had reached an enlightened state.
Much impressed by this news, several of his peers went to speak with him.
"We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?" his fellow students inquired.
"It is," Kyogen answered.
"Tell us," said a friend, "how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever," replied the enlightened Kyogen.

― 100% CHAMPS with a Yes! Attitude. (Austin, Still), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:32 (nineteen years ago)

19 years and 7 months of staring at exceptionally beautiful women & sexually desiring something one can never (rationally) hope to have

― and what (ooo), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:35 (nineteen years ago)

"It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night."

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 15 September 2006 00:37 (nineteen years ago)

What, no Schopenhauer yet?

"It is the worst of all possible worlds ... if it were a little worse, it would be no longer capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds."

"There is no doubt that life is given to us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome - to be got over."

― salexandra (salexander), Friday, 15 September 2006 01:17 (nineteen years ago)

"Everything is a dangerous drug to me except reality, which is unendurable."

--Cyril Connolly

― Paul Ess (Paul Ess), Friday, 15 September 2006 13:50 (nineteen years ago)

More Kierkagaard:

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth. Look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity. Then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

Of course, he has plenty of optimistic ones, too:

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

― Edward III (edward iii), Friday, 15 September 2006 16:01 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

"To be reprimanded at work is the same as a spanking from your parents."

ANON

― Latham Green (mike), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:01 (nineteen years ago)

The Dolphin

Dolphins, you play in the sea,
But the waves are always bitter.
Do I sometimes laugh with joy?
Life is still cruel.

OMG I used to have a woodcut print that had this poem (in french) with it. I don't think I knew it was Apollinaire, but I always loved it.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 5 January 2007 04:49 (nineteen years ago)

four weeks pass...

"No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one." - E.M. Cioran

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 4 February 2007 04:08 (nineteen years ago)

i finally found a copy of that early cioran book - that he wrote when he was just a sweet young thing - at the dump and it is so amazing. so fucking funny. he would have been my god if i had read him in high school.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 February 2007 04:54 (nineteen years ago)

it must mean something that the pessimistic philosphers always seem to be the funniest ones.

― ryan (ryan), Sunday, 4 February 2007 06:07 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

revive just because this is one of my favorite threads ever

― modestmickey, Sunday, 1 April 2007 04:37 (nineteen years ago)

my bipolar episoding sister helping me with my decision to move to SanFran. "think of it this way. its just one of a myriad of equally bad choices you could make." me: thank you.

― SusanD, Sunday, 1 April 2007 04:54 (nineteen years ago)

Embarrassing confession: I've got almost everything of cioran's published in English, but I'm still not entirely sure how you pronounce his name. Can anyone offer a rough phonetic guide?

― sonofstan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

"I always feel trapped in death hands.
wherever i turn - it's everywhere" (montaine)

― Zeno, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

"it must mean something that the pessimistic philosphers always seem to be the funniest ones."

nietzsche! he could be so funny. so many great one-liners.

― scott seward, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:24 (nineteen years ago)

Actual Romanian pronunciation - Cho-run (like "chore")
French - Syo-run

amirite?

― Jena, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:46 (nineteen years ago)

nietzsche's hilarious, but the last thing i'd call him is pessimistic.

― max, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

he had his down days.

― scott seward, Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:51 (nineteen years ago)

My favorite, by Walter Benjamin:

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

― M.V., Sunday, 1 April 2007 18:54 (nineteen years ago)

xpost actually i take that back ntz had a weird relationship w/ pessimism.

but he was no schopenhauer:

"But against the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not what we may picture in our imagination, but what can actually exist and last. Now this world is arranged as it had to be if it were to be capable of continuing with great difficulty to exist; if it were a little worse, it would be no longer capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds."

― max, Sunday, 1 April 2007 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

i love that one. the ending is like a punch-line. schop always make me laugh

― ryan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 20:48 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it. - Mignon McLaughlin

Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them. - Nietzsche

We have smothered ourselves, buried ourselves, in the vast heap of information which all of us have and none of us has. - Gamaliel Bradford

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. - Mencken

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one. - Mignon McLaughlin

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it raging and roaring like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free and ending just where it began. - William Hazlitt

― mayhaps, Thursday, 10 May 2007 23:47 (nineteen years ago)

Not really a philosopher, but Matthew Arnold:

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night".

This is from the description of this week's "In Our Time" BBC Radio 4 Podcast concerning Victorian Pessimism, which I am going to listen to shortly.

― Gukbe, Friday, 11 May 2007 00:41 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

No Adorno quotes?

― libcrypt, Sunday, 26 August 2007 03:57 (eighteen years ago)

"Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"

― max, Sunday, 26 August 2007 04:06 (eighteen years ago)

God, I need to read a Cioran book!

― Tape Store, Sunday, 26 August 2007 04:29 (eighteen years ago)

I'm so glad there's some Nietzsche up in this bitch.

― Bimble, Sunday, 26 August 2007 04:52 (eighteen years ago)

A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
-- Camus

most of these make lawl none moreso than this

― tremendoid, Sunday, 26 August 2007 05:01 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

"The way in which we have spent the afternoon is so vile, we ought not to go on living."

Wittgenstein, after attending a rowing regatta with Russell.

― allez, allons-y, on y va (ledge), Sunday, 19 October 2008 15:48 (seventeen years ago)

otm, rowing events are the worst

― jabba hands, Monday, 20 October 2008 00:48 (seventeen years ago)

A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the blogs.
-- Camus

― HOOS clique iphones fool get ya steen on (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, 20 October 2008 00:53 (seventeen years ago)

More Kierkegaard (this phrase is on the cover of my - Penguin iirc - edition of Fear and trembling), not so pessimistic if like Kierkegaard you are a Christian, but I don't share Søren's faith so it's fairly brutal to me:

"If a human being did not have an eternal consciousness, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting power that writhing in dark passions produced everything, be it significant or insignificant, if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?”

― what U cry 4 (jim), Monday, 20 October 2008 00:55 (seventeen years ago)

Skipping 264 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Nope, 37:40 evolved into Jackie Moore - This Time Baby (1979)

― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Sunday, 19 August 2018 18:24 (seven years ago)

Wrong thread, sorry.

― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Sunday, 19 August 2018 18:24 (seven years ago)

five months pass...

Satiation is the point at which you must face the existential revelation that you didn’t really want what you seemed so desperate to have, that your most urgent desires are only a filthy vitalist trick to keep the show on the road. If you can’t replace the fear or the thrill of the chase why stir yourself to persue yet another empty kill? Why carry on with the charade?

― 29 facepalms, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 21:08 (seven years ago)

four months pass...

Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all

Arthur Balfour

― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 13 June 2019 22:27 (seven years ago)

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