Unbearable Lightness Quotes - Page 2

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

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Beautiful, Two

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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

  90 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.

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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

  Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Claims, Partners

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

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• 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

• 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

• Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Men, Voice

  9 Copy quote

• In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

  Milan Kundera

  Answers, Kitsch, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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• 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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• 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

• Happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  31 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Actors, Warning, Rehearsal

  9 Copy quote

• 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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• 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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• 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

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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

  17 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

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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.

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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

  10 Copy quote

• Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

  Milan Kundera

  Relationship, Love Is, Violence

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

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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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