"We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold."
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Milan Kundera quotes (page 9 of 21)
410 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means."
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"The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme."
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"Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries."
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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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"To put it another way, every love relationship is based upon unwritten conventions rashly agreed upon by the lovers during the first weeks of their love. On the one hand, they are living a sort of dream; on the other, without realizing it, they are drawing up the fine print of their contracts like the most hard-nosed of lawyers. O lovers! Be wary during those perilous first days! If you serve the other party breakfast in bed, you will be obliged to continue same in perpetuity or face charges of animosity and treason!"
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"Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short."
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"There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize."
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"Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament."
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"Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love."
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"Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence."
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"Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone - what was left to betray?"
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"The best actors do not let the wheels show."
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"Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man's image will now be transformed to the image of woman. The more technical and mechanical, cold and metallic it becomes, the more it will need the kind of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweiblich, the eternally feminine!"
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"In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions."
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"[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory."
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"Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion."
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"Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee."
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"Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden."
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"And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film."
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