Milan Kundera Quotes

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198 Quotes on Love, Friendship, and Human Nature – Wisdom for a Fresh Perspective

“Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.”

“I have no mission. No one has.”

“The emotion of love gives all of us a misleading illusion of knowing the other.”

“The moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.”

“A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”

“Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

“Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.”

“In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood”

“Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.”

“I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.”

“The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…”

“Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.”

“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”

“She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”

“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.”

“[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.”

“Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.”

“Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

“The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.”

“Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.”

“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

“Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!”

“Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.”

“Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.”

“A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.”

“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.”

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”

“Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.”

“We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.”

“Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.”

“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.”

“The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become”

“The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.”

“Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup.”

“She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.”

“All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.”

“She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.”

“The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.”

“We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.”

“Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

“Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.”

“Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.”

“Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)”

“People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.”

“You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.”

“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.”

“Optimism is the opium of the people.”

“I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.”

“The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.”