Quote

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

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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Nothing
Compassionate
Feels
Empathy
Even
Heavy
Intensified
Compassion
Weighs
Hundred
Prolonged
Imagination
Heavier
Pain
Lightness
Someone
Unbearable

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
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The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.
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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.
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The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
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Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.
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The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.
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Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel it is its morality.
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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!
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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.
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Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
Milan Kundera
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Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
Milan Kundera
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what's the matter? he asked nothing what do you want me to do for you? i want you to be old. ten years older. twenty years older what she meant was: i want you to be weak. as weak as i am.
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.
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La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
Milan Kundera
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But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away.
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You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
Milan Kundera