Unbearable Lightness Of Being Quotes

• 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)

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• When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. 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

  Revenge, Drama, Struggle

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

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• When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Heart, Mind

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

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• 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

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• she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

  Milan Kundera

  Book, Unbearable, Arms

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• There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

  Milan Kundera

  Pain, Compassion, Imagination

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

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• The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

  Milan Kundera

  Claims, Partners, Sentimentality

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

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• Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than 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.

  Milan Kundera

  Success, Fall, Voice

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• 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. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, People, Political

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

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• And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

  Milan Kundera

  Rehearsal, Firsts, Unbearable

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

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• 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

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• We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

  Milan Kundera

  Eye, People, Dreamer

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• Happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

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• Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Asking, Demand

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

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Communication, Games

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

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• To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.

  Milan Kundera

  Letting Go, Dog, Stress

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

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• She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

  Milan Kundera

  Strong, Overwhelming Desire, Slave

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

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• 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, Compare

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• 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.

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• In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

  Milan Kundera

  Sunset, Auras, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", 1988.

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• For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Mean, Eye

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

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• The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Goes On, World, Unbearable

  "Money And Class In America: Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion" by Lewis H. Lapham, (Chapter 7, Descent Into The Mirror, p. 181), 1989.

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• 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

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