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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
Body
Shimmering
Temporal
Flame
Flames
Image
Essence
Eternal
Thought

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
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The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
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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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Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.
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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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Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea.
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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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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.
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The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.
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The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.
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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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Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
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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.
Milan Kundera
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Business only has two functions - innovation and marketing.
Milan Kundera
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Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
Milan Kundera
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Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent.
Milan Kundera
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The important thing is to abide by the rule of threes. Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart.
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Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
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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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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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