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Milan Kundera Inspirational Quotes (216)

Page 8 of 9
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It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
Milan Kundera
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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
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...people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste.
Milan Kundera
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To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.
Milan Kundera
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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
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If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct... make any better. It's frightening.
Milan Kundera
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And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
Milan Kundera
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The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
Milan Kundera
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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor
Milan Kundera
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I have a strong will to love you for eternity.
Milan Kundera
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The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.
Milan Kundera
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At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
Milan Kundera
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I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
Milan Kundera
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Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
Milan Kundera
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Is not parody the eternal lot of man?
Milan Kundera
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Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.
Milan Kundera
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Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea.
Milan Kundera
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Why don't you ever use your strength on me? she said. Because love means renouncing strength, said Franz softly.
Milan Kundera
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Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy the Animals.
Milan Kundera
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How goodness heightens beauty!
Milan Kundera
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The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.
Milan Kundera
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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
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The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.
Milan Kundera
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...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)
Milan Kundera
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