Quotes from book
Immortality

Immortality
Milan KunderaOriginal title Nesmrtelnost (Czech, 1988)

Immortality is a novel in seven parts, written by Milan Kundera in 1988 in Czech. First published 1990 in French. English edition 345 p., translation by Peter Kussi. This novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman, seemingly to her swimming instructor. Immortality is the last of a trilogy that includes The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Milan Kundera photo

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

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“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 book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“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.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“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.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

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

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

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

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“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.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

“I have a strong will to love you for eternity.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Milan Kundera photo

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

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

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