Milan Kundera Quotes

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.

تصور کنید یک دست شما را قطع کرده و به پیکر شخص دیگری پیوند زده باشند و یک روز، کسی در مقابل شما می‌نشیند و جلو روی شما، این دست را تکان می‌دهد و با آن به شما اشاره می‌کند. بدون تردید فکر می‌کنید که این یک مترسک است و هرچند که با آن به‌تمامی آشنا باشید، هرچند که مطمئن باشید که این دست خود شماست ولی از اینکه لمسش کنید، هراس خواهید داشت.

صورتنا الخاصة، هي اللغز الأكبر بالنسبة لنا.

The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.

We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.

تضرب حكاية الشخصين الموشكين على أن يصيرا عشيقين بجذورها في القدم ،بحيث نستطيع نسيان العهد الذي تجري فيه .. ما ألطف أن يحكي المرء هذا النوع من المغامرات ! و ما ألذّ أن ينساها ، هي التي جفّفت نسغ حيواتنا القصيرة لكي نسخرها لهذه الأعمال التافهة، فما أجمل أن ننسي التاريخ !

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.

I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.

If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever.

A man may ask anything of a woman, but unless he wishes to behave like a brute, he must make it possible for her to act in harmony with her deepest self-deceptions.

Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

...because love is continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.

Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.

If rejection and priviledge are one and the same, if there is no difference between the sublime and the paltry, if Son of God can undergo judgement of shit, then human existence loses its dimensions and becomes unbearable light.