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Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

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
Literary
Unknown
Existence
Reason
Human
Humans
Fragment
Work
Fragments
Reveals

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.
Milan Kundera
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Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.
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Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?
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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
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She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.
Milan Kundera
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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
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We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love.
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You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
Milan Kundera
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As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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Is not parody the eternal lot of man?
Milan Kundera
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Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
Milan Kundera
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Sad company is bad company.
Milan Kundera
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
Milan Kundera
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I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.
Milan Kundera
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The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.
Milan Kundera
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Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.
Milan Kundera