Quote

The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

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
Mind
Object
Favour
Supreme
Senators
Argument
Dictatorship
Objects
Reign
Feeling
Realm
Indecent
Speak
Realms
Reigns
Feelings
Speaks
Kitsch
Heart
Finds
Senator

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.
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We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.
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Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
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On the surface, an intelligible lie underneath, the unintelligible truth.
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The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
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Even in the game there lurks a lack of freedom even in a game is a trap for the players.
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Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
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Happiness is the longing for repetition.
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Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.
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The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.
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Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
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There is such a thing as everyday, ordinary, vulgar ecstasy the ecstasy of anger, the ecstasy of speed at the wheel, the ecstasy of ear-splitting noise, ecstasy in the soccer stadium.
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Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.
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Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
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In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.
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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.
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Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. (p.148)
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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.
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The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.
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Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.
Milan Kundera