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In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.

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
Emotion
Everything
Pathos
Sincerity
Presence
Dare

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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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.
Milan Kundera
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How goodness heightens beauty!
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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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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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The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
Milan Kundera
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The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.
Milan Kundera
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Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Milan Kundera
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Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.
Milan Kundera
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I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.
Milan Kundera
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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
Milan Kundera
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Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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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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I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
Milan Kundera
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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
Milan Kundera
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Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
Milan Kundera
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The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
Milan Kundera
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Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.
Milan Kundera