Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 6

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• Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view­point of the novel's wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

  Milan Kundera

  Views, Evil, Judging

  "Testaments Betrayed". Book by Milan Kundera, 1995.

  12 Copy quote

• Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Logic, Source

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• The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

  Milan Kundera

  Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Claims, Partners

  "Nesnesitelna lehkost byti (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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• Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Men, Voice

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• Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Sad Life, Gentleman

  Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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• You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Imagination, Modern

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven". Book editing by George Plimpton, Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), 1988.

  8 Copy quote

• Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Half, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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• Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.

  Milan Kundera

  Years, Long, Noise

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• He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

  Milan Kundera

  Plato, Philosophy, Love Is

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• Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

  Milan Kundera

  Reason, Fragments, Existence

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• Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.

  Milan Kundera

  Light, Darkness, Intense

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• Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.

  Milan Kundera

  Suicide, Self, Guarantees That

  Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

  16 Copy quote

• In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

  Milan Kundera

  Beauty, Beautiful, Mean

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• Laughing deeply is living deeply.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Laughing

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• Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Forget, Immortality

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• Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.

  Milan Kundera

  Weight, Gains, Burden

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• Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

  Milan Kundera

  Spiritual, Angel, Warrior

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• The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Age, Unseen

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• Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

  Milan Kundera

  Daughter, Mother, Children

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• She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

  Milan Kundera

  Sadness, Space, Together

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• Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Men, Historical

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• But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

  Milan Kundera

  Strong, Hurt, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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• Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.

  Milan Kundera

  Beautiful, Two, People

  "Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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• Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.

  Milan Kundera

  Children, Love You, Thinking

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• Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.

  Milan Kundera

  Butterfly, Wind, Ridiculous

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