Unbearable Lightness Quotes:

Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Love, Asking, Demand, Delivering, Lightness

In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim, 1984.

topic: Men, Age, Body, Lightness, Love Poetry

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.

- Milan Kundera

source: "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Jealousy, Dog, Evil, I Love My Dog, Labrador Dogs

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Perfect, Want, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Previous Life, Unbearable Lightness

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Unhappy, Life Is, Persons, Lightness, Unhappy Person

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Sunset, Auras, Nostalgia, Everything Is Illuminated, Lightness

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Success, Fall, Voice, Lightness, Unbearable Things

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.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Giving, Birth, Realizing, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Mean, Use, Love Means, Unbearable Lightness

For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: 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.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Lying, Mean, Eye, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Flirting, Promise, Guarantees, Unbearable Lightness

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 fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Eye, People, Dreamer, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

- Milan Kundera

topic: Running, Children, Nice, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

- Milan Kundera

source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 17 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

topic: Past, People, Political, Apathetic, Better Future

Healing comes from love. And loving every living thing in turn helps you love yourself.

- Portia de Rossi

topic: Love You, Healing, Helping, Living Things, Unbearable Lightness

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.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Love, Dream, Memories, Lightness, Metaphoric

Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Art, Mean, Passion, Extremism, Longing For Death

loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Ideas, Empires, Lightness, Fade Away, Unbearable Lightness

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Animal, Compassion, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Lightness, Animal Abuse

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Strong, Overwhelming Desire, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Don't Let Me Go, Unbearable Lightness

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

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Courage, Law, Coincidence In Life, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

we might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. he is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Fall, Men, Squares, Vertigo, Unbearable Lightness

You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Love, Two, Numbers, Unbearable Lightness

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Love, Beautiful, Two, Alone In Love, Unbearable Lightness

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Life, Mean, Decision, Lightness, Groundwork

The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Girl, Moving, Boys, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

- Milan Kundera

source: "Nesnesitelna lehkost byti (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Claims, Partners, Unbearable Lightness

But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

- Milan Kundera

topic: Men, Hysteria, Self, Exaggerated, Unbearable Lightness

Tereza knew what happens during 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.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Love Is, Men, Voice, Unbearable Lightness

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Answers, Kitsch, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Unbearable Lightness

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

- Milan Kundera

source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being pt. 3, ch. 10 (1984) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

topic: Drama, Unbearable, Burden, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Cutting, Tests, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Happiness, Laughter, Joy, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.

- Milan Kundera

source: "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Letting Go, Dog, Stress, Bulldogs, Inspirational Dog

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Dream, Communication, Games, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Pain, Compassion, Imagination, Lightness, Unbearable Things

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fullfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

- Milan Kundera

topic: Real, Men, Air, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Plato, Philosophy, Love Is, Plato S, Lightness

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

- Milan Kundera

source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

topic: Inspirational, Heart, Mind, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Book, Arms, Century, Lightness, Dandy

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

topic: Love, Sleep, Passion, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Happiness, Running, Time, Lightness, Unbearable Lightness

But deep down she said to herself, Franz maybe strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he's loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Strong, Love Is, Mirrors, Deep Down, Unbearable Lightness

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Hurt, Strong, Enough, Unbearable Lightness, Unbearable Lightness Of Being