"We die in proportion to the words we fling around us"

Cioran warns that language is not free; it is a currency minted from our vital energy. To speak is to squander or invest portions of ourselves. The more recklessly we scatter words, opinions, slogans, accusations, the more we disperse attention, dilute presence, and exhaust the inner stores that give life density. “Fling” suggests velocity and carelessness: speech hurled outward becomes shrapnel, and some fragments curve back to wound the thrower.

Words distance us from immediacy. Experience arrives raw; language embalms it in concepts. We name, categorize, and explain until the event is no longer lived but archived. Each label fixes what was fluid; each explanation subtracts a degree of mystery. Too many words can convert passion into commentary, awe into analysis. We do not merely talk about life; we replace life with talk.

There is also a moral register. Words can be weapons, and their fallout is real: alienated friends, brittle communities, reputations executed by rumor. The deaths accumulate, trust dies, hope dies, curiosity dies, whenever speech becomes performance rather than communion. In the age of perpetual posting, our identities are stretched thin across a field of utterances; quantity impersonates vitality while quietly consuming it.

Yet the aphorism is not a ban on language but a plea for austerity. Speak as if each word costs blood. Let silence do its work: to settle sediment, to restore proportion, to keep certain truths intact by refusing to expose them to the glare of chatter. When speech is needed, let it be exact, merciful, and earned by listening. The paradox that a writer condemns words is deliberate; it asks us to use language that pays for itself by creating reality rather than merely commenting on it.

We live proportionally to the words we refrain from wasting, and we die to the extent that we throw them away. Choose utterances that concentrate being. Let the rest perish unspoken.