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Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 3

All Quotes Adventure Age Ambition Art Attitude Beauty Betrayal Brotherhood Certainty Character Childhood Children Choices Coincidence Compassion Culture Darkness Desire Doubt Drama Evil Fashion Feelings Film Funny Giving Goodness Happiness Hatred Heart Home Hurt Imagination Immortality Inspirational Joy Judgment Laughter Life Love Lying Memories Metaphor Morality Morning Nostalgia Passion Past Pleasure Reality Running Sadness Sleep Soul Struggle Stupidity Suffering Today Understanding Violence War Water Writing

The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.

The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.

Pleasure, Ambiguity, Greater

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

Inspirational, Funny, Ambition

Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.

Memories, Lying, Believe

All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications.

Memories, Shadow, Empires

I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.

Thinking, Mind, World

"Farewell Waltz". Book by Milan Kundera, 1972.

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fullfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Real, Men, Air

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.

Lying, Sadness, Elude Us

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.

Hate, Human Nature, Traps

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: The criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

Thinking, Europe, People

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

Love, Peace, Nature

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

Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

Questions And Answers, Serious, Naive

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

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.

Jealousy, Dog, Evil

"Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Life, Mean, Decision

Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

Flirting, Promise, Guarantees

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

I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.

Hate, Common

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Lying, Chaos, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

Love, Sleep, Passion

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

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

Attitude, Compassion, Animal

I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way.

Desire, Way, Feels

"Farewell Waltz: A Novel". Book by Milan Kundera, 1976.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Sweet, Loneliness, Being Alone

Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

Rain, Fall, Self

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

Perfect, Want, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

Memories, Burden, Collapse

As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

Choices, Unhappy, Desolation

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.

Love, Beautiful, Two

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