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c9d88cf
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How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more
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Milan Kundera |
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9c88321
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On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.
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Milan Kundera |
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b3f8f19
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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
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Milan Kundera |
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a0f8b3d
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We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.
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understanding
revelation
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Milan Kundera |
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9c0f97e
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True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
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animals
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Milan Kundera |
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e6abb4c
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The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.
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Milan Kundera |
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e99df30
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Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
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metaphors
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Milan Kundera |
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6df38de
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no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.
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Milan Kundera |
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4ec31fa
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Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.
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Milan Kundera |
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334f327
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Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.
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Milan Kundera |
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bd0746e
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For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.
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truth
public
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Milan Kundera |
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601a73e
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The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
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Milan Kundera |
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edd625f
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To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
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Milan Kundera |
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af6f80d
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'drkn mndh zmn Twyl 'nh lm y`d blmkn qlb hdh l`lm, wl tGyyrh l~ l'fDl, wl yqf jrynh lby's l~ l'mm. lm ykn thm@ sw~ mqwm@ wHyd@ mmkn@ : 'lW n'khdhh `l~ mHml ljd
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Milan Kundera |
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4ba2d8e
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He was well aware that of the two of three thousand times he had made love (how many times had he made love in his life?) only two or three were really essential and unforgettable. The rest were mere echoes, imitations, repetitions, or reminiscences.
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Milan Kundera |
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d332c17
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It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
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Milan Kundera |
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ef823a8
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But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
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Milan Kundera |
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a5d9fd7
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I have a strong will to love you for eternity.
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Milan Kundera |
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aef97e8
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Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
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Milan Kundera |
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59ed07d
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Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. The task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting. No one will redress the wrongs that have been ..
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forgiving
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Milan Kundera |
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4cdd53c
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There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in ..
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Milan Kundera |
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3c59cb2
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The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women.
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men
relationships
women
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Milan Kundera |
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caa06c7
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I have no mission. No one has.
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Milan Kundera |
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f9de5fe
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Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.
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writing
wisdom
prophetic
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Milan Kundera |
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e12e4fd
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It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.
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close-mindedness
hypothesis
open-mindedness
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Milan Kundera |
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3d020eb
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Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it.
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Milan Kundera |
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f162045
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We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the "Es muss sein!" to our own great love."
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Milan Kundera |
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26953a2
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A mismatched outfit, a slightly defective denture, an exquisite mediocrity of the soul-those are the details that make a woman real, alive. The women you see on posters or in fashion magazines-the ones all the women try to imitate nowadays-how can they be attractive? They have no reality of their own; they're just the sum of a set of abstract rules. They aren't born of human bodies; they hatch ready-made from the computers." ~The Book of La..
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Milan Kundera |
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6c46f03
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Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of l..
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Milan Kundera |
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a0200d1
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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. 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.
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Milan Kundera |
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9635085
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Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that..
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Milan Kundera |
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3e68f98
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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.
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romance
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Milan Kundera |
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a707e7f
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Why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth to be a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think?...If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what yo..
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Milan Kundera |
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f0ff359
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Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.
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Milan Kundera |
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65f2bf4
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lnsn ynsj Hyth `l~ Gyr `lm mnh wfqan lqwnyn ljml Ht~ fy lHZt ly's l'kthr qtm@
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Milan Kundera |
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f6f5012
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Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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Milan Kundera |
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90cbd81
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All languages that derive from Latin form the word "compassion" by combining the prefix meaning "with" (com-) and the root meaning "suffering" (Late Latin, passio). In other languages, Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance - this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means "feeling". In languages that derive from Latin, "compassion" means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer..
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Milan Kundera |
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052bcdc
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Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
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Milan Kundera |
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12c0216
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He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world's store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.
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influence
thoughts
originality
independent-thought
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Milan Kundera |
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5ba05b3
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n 'lmn lshkhSy lys b'thql mn l'lm ldhy n`nyh m` lakhr wmn 'jl lakhr wfy mkn akhr; 'lm yD`fh lkhyl wtrjW`h my't l'Sd.
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Milan Kundera |
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a5676b2
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Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.
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Milan Kundera |
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e758fbb
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Another image comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I..
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Milan Kundera |
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2c76674
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I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.
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Milan Kundera |
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59bfb47
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The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies...
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Milan Kundera |