Unbearable Lightness Of Being Quotes - Page 2

• A single metaphor can give birth to love.

  Milan Kundera

  Giving, Unbearable, Birth

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Show source

• it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Mysterious, Coincidence

  8 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

  Show source

• Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

  Milan Kundera

  Goal, Suffering, Unbearable

  13 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

  Show source

• We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

  Milan Kundera

  Actors, Warning, Rehearsal

  9 Copy quote

• In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Age, Body

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim, 1984.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

  Milan Kundera

  Giving, Unbearable, Birth

  9 Copy quote

• Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

  Milan Kundera

  Cutting, Tests, Unbearable

  9 Copy quote

• Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

  Milan Kundera

  Relationship, Love Is, Violence

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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

• we might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. he is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

  Milan Kundera

  Fall, Men, Squares

  8 Copy quote

• A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

  Milan Kundera

  Unhappy Person, Unbearable, Life Is

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

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

  Milan Kundera

  Animal, Compassion, Purity

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

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Dream, Memories

  11 Copy quote

• Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

  Milan Kundera

  Running, Children, Nice

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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

  Milan Kundera

  Unbearable, Metaphor, Dangerous

  8 Copy quote

• Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

  Milan Kundera

  Courage, Law, Coincidence In Life

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

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Milan Kundera

  Ideas, Empires, Unbearable

  30 Copy quote

• But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Self, Hysteria

  8 Copy quote

• The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

  Milan Kundera

  Girl, Moving, Boys

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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

  Milan Kundera

  Life, People, World

  7 Copy quote

• In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

  Milan Kundera

  Home, Mind, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". 1988.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Chaos, Surface

  18 Copy quote