Laudator Temporis Acti

E.M. Cioran (1911-1995), On the Heights of Despair, tr. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 6:

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

J'ignore totalement pourquoi il faut faire quelque chose ici-bas, pourquoi il nous faut avoir des amis et des aspirations, des espoirs et des rêves. Ne serait-il pas mille fois préférable de se retirer à l'écart du monde, loin de tout ce qui fait son tumulte et ses complications? Nous renoncerions ainsi à la culture et aux ambitions, nous perdrions tout sans rien obtenir en échange. Mais que peut-on obtenir en ce monde?

Horace, Epistles 1.11.7-10 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

You know what Lebedus is—a town more desolate than Gabii and
Fidenae: yet there would I love to live,
and forgetting my friends and by them forgotten,
gaze from the land on Neptune's distant rage.

scis Lebedus quid sit? Gabiis desertior atque
Fidenis vicus; tamen illic vivere vellem,
oblitus meorum, obliviscendus et illis,
Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem.