We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.

Cioran’s aphorism compresses his characteristic tension between metaphysical despair and astonishment at existence. “Hell” names the felt condition of being alive—consciousness as torment, history as catastrophe, the self as a trap. Yet he immediately counterbalances that verdict: every instant is also a “miracle,” not in a consoling religious sense but as sheer improbability and inexplicable givenness. The line thus refuses both optimism and pure nihilism. It suggests that lucidity means holding together two incompatible truths: life is unbearable in its suffering and absurdity, and nonetheless each moment’s occurrence is wondrously strange. The miracle does not redeem the hell; it makes it more uncanny.