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c5d69aa
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Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume to correct attitude to her unchosen faith. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as taking pride in it.
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Milan Kundera |
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856373a
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In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.
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Milan Kundera |
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3d03058
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Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?
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Milan Kundera |
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cecd3d8
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In Irena's head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears.
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sex
personality
drinking
poetry
writing
love
forgetting
forget
poet
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Milan Kundera |
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80d3da6
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Tamina serves coffee and calvados to the customers (there aren't all that many, the room being always half empty) and then goes back behind the bar. Almost always there is someone sitting on a barstool, trying to talk to her. Everyone likes Tamina. Because she knows how to listen to people. But is she really listening? Or is she merely looking at them so attentively, so silently? I don't know, and it's not very important. What matters is th..
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Milan Kundera |
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bc6f7a3
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l yumkn llnsn 'bdan 'n yudrk mdh `lyh 'n yf`l, l'nh l ymlk l Hy@ wHd@, l ys`h mqrnth bHywt sbq@ wl SlHh fy Hywt lHq@.
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Milan Kundera |
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8d4d105
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No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development.
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idyll
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Milan Kundera |
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a1e8b4c
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jmy`n fy jz m mn 'nfsn n`ysh wr lzmn, rbm 'nn l na`y `mran l fy lHZt stthny'y@, w'nn m`Zm lwqt 'shkhS bl '`mr
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Milan Kundera |
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b7ca19d
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I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)
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Milan Kundera |
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b44ed78
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ymkn llmr 'n ylwm nfsh `l~ `ml , `l~ klm@ tlfZ bh , wlkn l ystTy` 'n ylwm nfsh `l~ sh`wr , l'nh bkl bsT@ , l ymlk 'y@ slT@ `lyh
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Milan Kundera |
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b01b2b4
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lky'n lnsny lys l sh`wran blwHd@. wHyd yHyT bh wHydwn.
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Milan Kundera |
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f90124e
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As early as 1930 Schoenberg wrote: "Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless"; it "force-feeds us music . . . regardless of whether we want to hear it, or whether we can grasp it," with the result that music becomes just noise, a noise among other noises. Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and ..
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music
radio
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Milan Kundera |
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16147db
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She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than the sight of a woman violated by her own body!
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women
control
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Milan Kundera |
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c8ab8d6
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When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings.
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Milan Kundera |
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c3bf7a6
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Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it 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 friend..
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Milan Kundera |
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d2b5750
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In spite of their love, they had made each other's life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak.
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Milan Kundera |
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6c891c9
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But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.
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Milan Kundera |
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77d9861
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ql rmwn: 'jl, hdhh h~ lHl. ytlq~ lns f~ lHy@, ythrthrwn wytnqshwn wytshjrwn dwn 'n ydrkw 'nhm ykhTbwn b`Dhm b`Dan mn b`yd, kl wHd mn mrSd yntSb f~ mwq` mkhtlf mn lzmn
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Milan Kundera |
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7a1f030
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There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked.
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Milan Kundera |
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25e0451
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That is why she dislikes dreams: they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its privileged status.
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Milan Kundera |
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ff392bd
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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
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Milan Kundera |
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9fd0544
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There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.
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Milan Kundera |
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97fc8fb
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Kitsch" is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German is entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." --
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Milan Kundera |
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2c8e18a
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A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions.
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Milan Kundera |
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87f290e
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I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.
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romantic-fiction
metaphysical
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Milan Kundera |
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ee335ff
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He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them 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.
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Milan Kundera |
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eb4df89
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What I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns towards me, what she is for me. I love her as character in our common love story. what wuld Hamlet be without the castle at Elsinore, without Ophelia, without all the concrete situations he goes through, what would he be without the text of his part? What would be left but an empty, dumb, illusory essence?
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Milan Kundera |
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7012835
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She knew, of course that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she ever had- he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength
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Milan Kundera |
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552658b
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The day after his father left, Franz and his mother went into town together, and as they left home Franz noticed that her shoes did not match. He was in a quandary: he wanted to point out the mistake, but was afraid he would hurt her. So, during the two hours they spent walking through the city together he kept his eyes focused on her feet. It was then he had his first inkling of what it means to suffer.
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Milan Kundera |
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64c4b3c
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The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.
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history
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Milan Kundera |
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cdac377
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History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.
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lightness
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Milan Kundera |
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83a997d
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smu `y'ltn 'yD, hw yuqsam ln blmSdf@, dwn 'n n`rf mt~ Zhr fy l`lm, wl kyf ltaqaTahu 'Hd l'jdd lmjhwlyn. nn lnfhm hdh lsma mTlqan, wl n`rf shyy'an `n trykhh, wm` dhlk nHmlh bkhlS mumajWd, ntwHWd bh wyrwq ln jdan, wnfkhr bh bshkl yd`w llskhry@ km lw 'nn nHn ldhyn btd`nh tHt t'thyr lhm `bqry
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Milan Kundera |
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739a36f
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She had come to him to escape her mother's world, a world where all bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceble. But he, too had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no distiction between Tereza's body and the other bodies. He sent her back to the world she tried to escape, sent to march naked with the other naked women
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Milan Kundera |
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0c4679a
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By writing books, a man turns into a universe.
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Milan Kundera |
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cf3482a
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nothing yet. I've been waiting." "for what?" she made no response. she could not tell him that she had been waiting for him."
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Milan Kundera |
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b3f9477
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At what exact moment did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie? Where was the border? Where is the border?
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Milan Kundera |
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fd06343
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The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
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Milan Kundera |
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0c96757
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Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: 'I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty.
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Milan Kundera |
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0255671
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Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.
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Milan Kundera |
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e8532b7
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The man raised his glass, 'To you!' Can't you think of a wittier toast?' Something was beginning to irritate him about the girl's game. Now sitting face to face with her, he realized it wasn't just the which were turning her into a stranger, but that her had changed, the movements of her body and her facial expression, and that she unpalatably and faithfully resembled that type of woman whom he knew so well and for whom he felt some ave..
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Milan Kundera |
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43a9f0a
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Because I'm happy that you exist at all, Elisabeth. Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is eno..
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love
laughable-loves
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Milan Kundera |
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f95c950
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Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. (p.148)
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Milan Kundera |
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ad59ad8
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It was drizzling. As people rushed along, they began opening umbrellas over their heads, and all at once the streets were crowded, too. Arched umbrella roofs collided with one another. The men were courteous, and when passing Tereza they held their umbrellas high over their heads and gave her room to go by. But the women would not yield; each looked straight ahead, waiting for the other woman to acknowledge her inferiority and step aside. T..
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Milan Kundera |
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036b6d2
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tkhyl 'nk `sht fy `lm lys fyh mry. knt stHlm bwjhk, knt sttkhylh knw` mn ln`ks lkhrjy lm hw dkhlk. b`d dhlk, frD 'nhm wD`w 'mmk mra@ w'nt fy l'rb`yn mn `mrk. tkhyl jz`k. knt str~ wjhan Gryban tmman. wknt stfhm bSwr@ jly@ m trfD lqrr bh: wjhk lys 'nta
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Milan Kundera |