Milan Kundera Quotes
The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.
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.
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.
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.
The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
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.
Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
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.
The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.
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.
Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.
A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
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.
The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.
The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.
The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
