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The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
Milan Kundera
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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
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Brünn
Choices
Humiliation
Everyone
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Without
Bases
Matter
Shame
Feel
Choice
Must
Personal
Feels
Mistake
Seen
Ignominy
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For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
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The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.
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The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
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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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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
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Leroy interrupted Chantal's fantasies: Freedom? As you live our your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom. You're free to melt your own individuality into the cauldron of the multitude either with a feeling of defeat or euphoria.
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When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.
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Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.
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The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite novelistic to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as fictive, fabricated, and untrue to life into the word novelistic. Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fas
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Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.
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When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
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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.
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