Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

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

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Funny, Ambition

  23 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Hate, Human Nature, Traps

  17 Copy quote

• 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?

  Milan Kundera

  Real, Men, Air

  17 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Chaos, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  18 Copy quote

• The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, People, Want

  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 17 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Thinking, Europe, People

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Peace, Nature

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

  69 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Life, Mean, Decision

  90 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Jealousy, Dog, Evil

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

  54 Copy quote

• 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 usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

  Milan Kundera

  Horse, Men, Order

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1884.

  10 Copy quote

• Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

  Milan Kundera

  Questions And Answers, Serious, Naive

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

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Sadness, Elude Us

  12 Copy quote

• a man possessed with peace is always smiling

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Always Smile, Possessed

  5 Copy quote

• 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).

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Sleep, Passion

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

  70 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Compassion, Animal

  65 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Desire, Way, Feels

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

  59 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Rain, Fall, Self

  41 Copy quote

• Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

  Milan Kundera

  Flirting, Promise, Guarantees

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

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Perfect, Want, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  53 Copy quote

• Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?

  Milan Kundera

  Funny, Beer, Hypocrisy

  4 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Hate, Common

  6 Copy quote

• The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

  Milan Kundera

  Beautiful, Memories, Brain

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

  23 Copy quote

• People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone.

  Milan Kundera

  People, Want, Void

  "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". Book by Milan Kundera, 1980.

  9 Copy quote

• You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, Thinking, Different

  11 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Memories, Burden, Collapse

  11 Copy quote

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