Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Imagination, Modern

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven". Book editing by George Plimpton, Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), 1988.

  8 Copy quote

• Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

  Milan Kundera

  Spiritual, Angel, Warrior

  89 Copy quote

• The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

  Milan Kundera

  Mistake, Choices, Matter

  94 Copy quote

• The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Age, Unseen

  8 Copy quote

• loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

  Milan Kundera

  Ideas, Empires, Unbearable

  30 Copy quote

• Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view­point of the novel's wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

  Milan Kundera

  Views, Evil, Judging

  "Testaments Betrayed". Book by Milan Kundera, 1995.

  12 Copy quote

• Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.

  Milan Kundera

  Weight, Gains, Burden

  8 Copy quote

• A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.

  Milan Kundera

  Travel, Two, Space

  8 Copy quote

• He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Plato, Philosophy, Love Is

  16 Copy quote

• Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Half, Unbearable

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

  14 Copy quote

• Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.

  Milan Kundera

  Strong, Two, Light

  8 Copy quote

• Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Forget, Immortality

  9 Copy quote

• She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

  Milan Kundera

  Sadness, Space, Together

  13 Copy quote

• Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Men, Historical

  11 Copy quote

• Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

  Milan Kundera

  Drama, Unbearable, Burden

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being pt. 3, ch. 10 (1984) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  76 Copy quote

• Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.

  Milan Kundera

  Crush, Smoking, Listening

  11 Copy quote

• Those boobs of yours are ubiquitous - like God!

  Milan Kundera

  9 Copy quote

• But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

  Milan Kundera

  Strong, Hurt, Unbearable

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

  12 Copy quote

• Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.

  Milan Kundera

  Butterfly, Wind, Ridiculous

  9 Copy quote

• And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Running, Time

  10 Copy quote

• Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Dance, Dancing

  11 Copy quote

• Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.

  Milan Kundera

  Messages, Chance, Speak

  "A Message for Ján Mančuška" by Rachel Mason, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 28, 2013.

  14 Copy quote

• Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.

  Milan Kundera

  Children, Love You, Thinking

  23 Copy quote

• Speak truth to power.

  Milan Kundera

  Speak, Speak The Truth

  14 Copy quote

• Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.

  Milan Kundera

  Beautiful, Two, People

  "Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

  23 Copy quote

Page 6 of 17

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin