"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
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Quote collection
Milan Kundera quotes (page 2 of 21)
410 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Memory does not make films, it makes photographs."
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"I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way."
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"High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium."
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"To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace."
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"Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal."
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"Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals."
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"The love between dog and man is idyllic, dogs were never expelled from paradise."
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"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."
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"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent."
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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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"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."
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"All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual."
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"I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches."
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"Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal."
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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."
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"Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?"
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"Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud."
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"To laugh is to live profoundly."
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"But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"
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