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f967323
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Na onezi, koito smiatat, che komunisticheskite rezhimi v Sredna Evropa sa tvorenie izkliuchitelno na prest'pnitsi, im ubiagva glavnata istina: prest'pnite rezhimi ne sa delo na prest'pnitsi, a na v'ztorzheni liude, tv'rdo viarvashchi, che sa otkrili edinstveniia p't k'm raia. Te otstoiavakha khrabro tazi svoia ubedenost i v neino ime likvidirakha mnogo khora. Po-k'sno na vsichki stana iasno, che niama nikak'v rai i sledovatelno v'ztorzhenit..
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Milan Kundera |
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b8f296b
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You must understand that by this time the only choice was among several varieties of defeat, but the town in question rejected compromise and would settle for nothing but victory. That was not reason talking; that was the voice of litost!
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Milan Kundera |
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076fd09
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Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.
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Milan Kundera |
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4d1d6e4
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During the last ten years of his life my father gradually lost the power of speech. At first he simply had trouble calling up certain words or would say similar words instead and then immediately laugh at himself. In the end he had only a handful of words left, and all his attempts at saying anything more substantial resulted in one of the last sentences he could articulate: 'That's strange.' Whenever he said 'That's strange,' his eyes woul..
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laughter
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Milan Kundera |
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bd87c17
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Do klastera odchazel kdysi lide, kteri nesouhlasili se svetem a nebrali jeho trapeni ani radosti za sve. Ale nase stoleti odmita priznat lidem pravo nesouhlasit se svetem.
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Milan Kundera |
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9af3d81
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A man may ask anything of a woman, but unless he wishes to behave like a brute, he must make it possible for her to act in harmony with her deepest self-deception.
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Milan Kundera |
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8fe492d
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The mediation of a woman is capable of imposing on hatred certain qualities characteristic of affection, for example curiosity, carnal interest, the urge to cross the threshold of intimacy.
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Milan Kundera |
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bd181fa
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whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. (...) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, "My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer!" Isn't his "I did not know I was a believer!" at the very root of his irreparable guilt?"
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Milan Kundera |
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cab64b1
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Her life was split. Both day and night were competing for her.
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Milan Kundera |
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41890b0
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I never forgot that, because, though I was only a child, something seemed to become clear to me: this is existence as such confronting time as such; and that confrontation, I understood, is named boredom.
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Milan Kundera |
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a6cea32
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Whe you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful and polite, you have a hard time reminding yourself that nothing he says is true, that nothing is sincere. Maintaining nonbelief requires a tremendous effort and the proper training.
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people-that-lie
reminding-youself
white-lies
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Milan Kundera |
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959e055
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For seven years he had lived bound to her,his every step subject to her scrutiny. She might as well have chained iron balls to his ankles. Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared. He had entered Parmenides' magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being''.
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Milan Kundera |
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2ba9456
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The formal innovations of the great masters always have a certain discreetness about them; such is true perfection; only among the small masters does novelty seek to call attention to itself.
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Milan Kundera |
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baf7434
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Too much faith is the worst ally
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Milan Kundera |
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e986e1e
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When he asked her why she was so silent, she told him she had not been satisfied with their lovemaking. She said he had made love to her like an intellectual.
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Milan Kundera |
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2881c09
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Because people who decline organized leisure activities are deserters from the great common struggle against boredom, and they deserve neither attention nor helmets.
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Milan Kundera |
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de5219b
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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.
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Milan Kundera |
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dcad3dd
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What exactly was her love worth? A few weeks of sadness? All right. And what is sadness? A bit of depression, a bit of languishing. And what is a week of sadness? No one is ever sad all of the time. She would be sad for a few minutes in the daytime, a few minutes in the evening; how many minutes in all? How many minutes of sadness did her love merit? How many minutes of sadness did he rate? Jaromil imagined his death, and he imagined the re..
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Milan Kundera |
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caad0e3
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If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency."
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Milan Kundera |
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11a9623
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It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (...) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman."
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irony
philosophy-of-language
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Milan Kundera |
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7b9562f
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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."
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Milan Kundera |
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3ca9fe5
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Insofar as it is possible to divide people in categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity.Every Frenchman is different. But all actors are similar.
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Milan Kundera |
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185245f
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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 other creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.
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Milan Kundera |
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81d0800
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It is entirely possible," said Tomas, "that a female dog addressed continually by a male name will develop lesbian tendencies."
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Milan Kundera |
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49cdda2
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All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind. But though predictions may be wrong, they are right about the people who voice them, not about their future but about their experience of the present moment.
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Milan Kundera |
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0e6e06e
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Franz, on the other hand, was certain that the division of life into private and public spheres is the source of all lies: a person is one thing in private and something quite different in public. For Franz, living in truth meant breaking down the barriers between the private and the public. He was fond of quoting Andre Breton on the desirability of living "in a glass house" into which everyone can look and there are no secrets."
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Milan Kundera |
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23c861e
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Oh, all that was so far away, almost forgotten. But during her mother's five-day stay in Paris, that feeling of inferiority, of weakness, of dependency came over her again.
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Milan Kundera |
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fb598c8
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If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross
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Milan Kundera |
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1f8e033
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Is it right to raise one's voice when others are being silenced? Yes.
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Milan Kundera |
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25fd488
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Nothing brings people together more quickly (though often spuriously and deceitfully) than shared melancholy; this atmosphere of quiet understanding, which puts all manner of fears and inhibitions to sleep and is easily comprehended by the refined and vulgar, the erudite and unlettered, is the most simple route to rapport, yet extremely rare: for one has to lay aside cultivated restraints, cultivated gestures and facial expressions, and be ..
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Milan Kundera |
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6da9476
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metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love
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Milan Kundera |
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3afbcb5
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Or take an instance from the student's childhood: His parents made him take violin lessons. He was not very gifted and his teacher would interrupt him to criticize his mistakes in a cold, unbearable voice. He felt humiliated, and he wanted to cry. But instead of trying to play in tune and not make mistakes, he would deliberately play wrong notes, the teacher's voice would become still more unbearable and harsh, and he himself would sink dee..
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Milan Kundera |
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142798e
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A sudden happiness, a feeling of bliss, the joy that came of freedom and a new life - these were the gifts she had left him.
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Milan Kundera |
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154cf3d
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Vertigo is something else than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which temps and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defense ourselves.
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Milan Kundera |
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4bc0df9
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She refused at first, saying it would make a mockery of their love. She loved him too much to admit that what she thought of as unforgettable could ever be forgotten. Finally, of course, she did as he asked, but without enthusiasm. The notebooks showed it: they had many empty pages, and the entries were fragmentary.
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love
fragmentary
unforgettable
pages
forgotten
mockery
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Milan Kundera |
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9986887
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What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed. From that time on she had known that beauty..
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Milan Kundera |
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13ffcf3
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People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles cease to exist.
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Milan Kundera |
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26a18b1
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Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed into the rabbit in her arms .
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Milan Kundera |
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0da2d5e
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No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
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Milan Kundera |
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f84c7f1
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Their message will never be decoded... because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centurie..
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myth
history
past
czech
signs
decode
enigma
symbols
messages
forgetting
novel
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Milan Kundera |
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07c9ba6
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My dear colleagues, as you know, the greatest misfortune for a man is a happy marriage; he hasn't the slightest hope of a divorce.
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kundera
laughable-loves
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Milan Kundera |
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f21bfb2
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Man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and enjoy it. What's more he longer saw his own life as a road, but as a highway
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man
road
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Milan Kundera |