Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• 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.

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

• Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.

  Milan Kundera

  Strong, Two, Light

  8 Copy quote

• Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.

  Milan Kundera

  Messages, Chance, Speak

  "A Message for Ján Mančuška" by Rachel Mason, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 28, 2013.

  15 Copy quote

• Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Dance, Dancing

  11 Copy quote

• Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

  Milan Kundera

  Drama, Unbearable, Burden

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being pt. 3, ch. 10 (1984) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  76 Copy quote

• A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.

  Milan Kundera

  Travel, Two, Space

  8 Copy quote

• Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.

  Milan Kundera

  Effort, Argument, Justify

  11 Copy quote

• And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Running, Time

  10 Copy quote

• The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

  Milan Kundera

  Voice, Calling, Return

  12 Copy quote

• Necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Bird, Magic

  11 Copy quote

• No episode is a priori condemned to remain an episode forever, for every event, no matter how trivial, conceals within itself the possibility of sooner or later becoming the cause of other events and thus changing into a story or an adventure. Episodes are like land mines. The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you.

  Milan Kundera

  Adventure, Land, Forever

  14 Copy quote

• She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.

  Milan Kundera

  Hurt, Book, Men

  16 Copy quote

• Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Strong, Passion

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

  19 Copy quote

• The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas.

  Milan Kundera

  Drama, Serious Subjects, Form

  12 Copy quote

• The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.

  Milan Kundera

  Novelists, World, Teach

  "The Most Original Book of the Season". Interview with Philip Roth, www.nytimes.com. November 30, 1980.

  4 Copy quote

• A single metaphor can give birth to love.

  Milan Kundera

  Giving, Unbearable, Birth

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

  7 Copy quote

• Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

  Milan Kundera

  Children, Questions And Answers, Limits

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

  15 Copy quote

• ...people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste. Can you tell me what kind of day can follow a beginning of such violence? What happens to people whose alarm clock daily gives them a small electric shock? Each day they become more used to violence and less used to pleasure.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Sleep, Blow

  5 Copy quote

• Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.

  Milan Kundera

  Dog, Animal, Law

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

  26 Copy quote

• Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.

  Milan Kundera

  Life, Might, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  9 Copy quote

• In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

  Milan Kundera

  Sunset, Auras, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", 1988.

  59 Copy quote

• We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Past, Realizing

  10 Copy quote

• And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

  Milan Kundera

  Rehearsal, Firsts, Unbearable

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

  21 Copy quote

• And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Book, Past

  9 Copy quote

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