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Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
Milan Kundera
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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
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University Teacher
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Brünn
Life
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Happens
Live
Tomas
Wells
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Might
Adages
Well
German
More quotes by Milan Kundera
Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
Milan Kundera
She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.
Milan Kundera
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
Milan Kundera
But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?
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The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
Milan Kundera
What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.
Milan Kundera
a man possessed with peace is always smiling
Milan Kundera
Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
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Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.
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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
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The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
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A man able to think isn't defeated - even when he is defeated.
Milan Kundera
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
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Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.
Milan Kundera
To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
Milan Kundera
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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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
Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.
Milan Kundera
Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
Milan Kundera
