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Milan Kundera Quotes

Total quotes: 10
“You can’t measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”
— Milan Kundera, Identity: A Novel
Tagged: Relationship, couple, Lovers, Love, affection, Words, Feelings, romance
“I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind… I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.”
— Milan Kundera, The Farewell Party
Tagged: Freedom, Friendship
“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”
— Milan Kundera, Identify
Tagged: Irony, Nostalgia, Absence, Sadness
“The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.”
— Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves
Tagged: Being human, humanity, risking, Taking Risks, offering, sacrificing, Helping, human actions, Human Behavior, Human Beauty, human, human's worth
“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
Tagged: Memory, Psychology, Remembering, Nostalgia
“As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Tagged: Litost, Czech Words, Untranslatable Words, humanity, Words, Language, Understanding Language, Pain, Aching
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
Tagged: Love, romance, heart, Mind, Heart And Mind
“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
Tagged: Read In Your 20s
“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. 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).”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
Tagged: Sex, Making Love, Passion
“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public.

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need.

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers.”
— Milan Kundera, via Amazon
Tagged: People, judging eyes, perceived by others, Judged, Human Relationships
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