Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 9

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A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.

Milan Kundera

Men, Giving, Monsters

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Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.

Milan Kundera

Memories, Past, Track

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Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

Milan Kundera

Courage, Law, Coincidence In Life

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

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Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.

Milan Kundera

Drinking, Sky, Water

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Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

Milan Kundera

Kitsch, Forgotten, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself

Milan Kundera

Lying, Want, Madmen

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All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.

Milan Kundera

Games, Lovers, Rules Of The Game

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...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.

Milan Kundera

Morning, Sleep, Blow

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The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

Milan Kundera

Heart, Feelings, Mind

"Light but sound" by John Banville, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2004.

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Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.

Milan Kundera

Wall, Dirty, Ideas

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The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.

Milan Kundera

Feelings, Doe, Elements

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The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

Milan Kundera

Lying, Self Confidence, Differences

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The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

Milan Kundera

Evil, Borders, Fuzzy

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Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

Milan Kundera

People, Feelings, Common

Milan Kundera (1983). “The Joke”, Viking Press

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We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

Milan Kundera

Love, Inspirational, Relationship

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Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.

Milan Kundera

Culture, Avalanches, Madness

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being". 1988.

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...he took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love.

Milan Kundera

Girl, Eye, Games

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To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

Milan Kundera

Women, Pride, Rebel

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

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What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Milan Kundera

Unique, People, Able

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From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward.

Milan Kundera

Moving, Good Luck, Cheerful

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But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?

Milan Kundera

Men, Gone, Masters

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...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)

Milan Kundera

Joy, Rooftops, Saddest

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Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.

Milan Kundera

Book, Writing, Epidemics

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Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.

Milan Kundera

Water, Dying, Radio

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Bacon's portraits are an interrogation on the limits of the self. Up to what degree of distortion does an individual still remain himself? To what degree of distortion does a beloved person still remain a beloved person? For how long does a cherished face growing remote through illness, through madness, through hatred, through death still remain recognizable? Where is the border beyond which a self ceases to be a self?

Milan Kundera

Self, Long, Hatred

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Born: April 1, 1929
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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