De Lijkendanser > De Lijkendanser's Quotes

“To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

“The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

“A new ignorance is on the horizon, an ignorance borne not of a lack of knowledge but of too much knowledge, too much data, too many theories, too little time.”
― Eugene Thacker, Tentacles Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3

“What if depression – reason’s failure to achieve self-mastery – is not the failure of reason but instead the result of reason? What if human reason works “too well,” and brings us to conclusions that are anathema to the existence of human beings? What we would have is a “cold rationalism,” shoring up the anthropocentric conceits of the philosophical endeavor, showing us an anonymous, faceless world impervious to our hopes and desires.”
― Eugene Thacker

“Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a lyricism written in the graveyard of philosophy.”
― Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation

“When solutions produce problems, when thought flounders in the absence of order, unity, and purpose, when healthy skepticism turns into pathological sarcasm – this is usually when pessimism enters the fray.”
― Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation

“Happiness is the feeling you have just before something goes wrong.”
― Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”
― H. P. Lovecraft

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Nameless City

“It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.”
― H. P. Lovecraft, Nemesis

“Religion is still useful among the herd - that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be.
Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else...”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.”
― Marquis De Sade

“Socialism is submission of the masochistic masses to the will of the sadistic elites.”
― A.E. Samaan, From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

“The bigger the family, the bigger the number of corpses it owes life.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“What do you do from morning to night?"

"I endure myself.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.”
― E. M. Cioran

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”
― Emil Cioran, All Gall is Divided: Aphorisms

“Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.”
― Émile Michel Cioran, The New Gods