On the Heights of Despair received a young authors' prize, established by the King Carol II Foundation for Art and Literature.

Humans may ignore such categories for several years by focusing on the routines of everyday life, or by participating in rational or intellectual endeavors.

Cioran scorns the latter categories: There is value only in that which bursts forth from inspiration, which springs up from the irrational depths of our being, from the secret center of our subjectivity.

I love him for his moments of doubt and regret, the only truly tragic ones in his life, though neither the most interesting nor the most painful, for if we had to judge from their suffering, how many before him would also be entitled to call themselves sons of God!

"[10] The book's title derives from a phrase that was commonly used in Romanian newspapers of the period to begin the obituaries of suicides, e.g. "On the heights of despair, young so-and-so took his life...".

The cover of the book's English edition is a detail of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, as painted on the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald.

[14] On the Heights of Despair was noted for its elaborate prose, aphorisms and philosophical pessimism, expressed in a style that Cioran would later be recognised for.

[2][15] Speaking on Cioran in general terms, Saint-John Perse described him as "the greatest French writer to honour our language since the death of Paul Valéry.

"[2] Although Cioran gained a following among French intellectuals during his later years, the response to his early work in his home country of Romania was overwhelmingly negative.