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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.

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
Must
Ridicule
Way
Push
Spirituality
Delight
Humility
Limits
Exaggeration
Fear
Mystic
Together
Mysticism

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I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect the value of all values.
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Only animals were not expelled from Paradise.
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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
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A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
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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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How goodness heightens beauty!
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Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
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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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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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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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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
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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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La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor
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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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...he took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love.
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she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.
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