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For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.

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
Eternal
Thought
Body
Shimmering
Temporal
Flame
Flames
Image
Essence

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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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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Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.
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The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.
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Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
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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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Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.
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Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles... no matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, even in Hitler's time, even in Stalin's time.
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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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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.
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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
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She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.
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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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Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.
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And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
Milan Kundera
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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.
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But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
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Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.
Milan Kundera
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Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other. But it was too late now.
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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
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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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