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She Regarded Books As The Emblems Of Secret Brotherhood. A Man With This Sort Of Library Couldn't Possibly Hurt Her.
-Milan Kundera
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She Regarded Books As

Milan Kundera
...
She Regarded Books As The Emblems Of Secret Brotherhood. A Man With This Sort Of Library Couldn't Possibly Hurt Her.

Understanding the Quote: "she regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. a man with..."

This quote by Milan Kundera reflects deeply on the theme of hurt. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Hurt, Book, Men, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Milan Kundera interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is celebrated for insightful thoughts on hurt and book. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Hurt
Book
Men
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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.
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Tereza Had Gone Back To Sleep; He Could Not. He Pictured Her Death. She Was Dead And Having Terrible Nightmares; But Because She Was Dead, He Was Unable To Wake Her From Them. Yes, That Is Death: Tereza Asleep, Having Terrible Nightmares, And He Unable To Wake Her.
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Nothing Is More Repugnant To Me Than Brotherly Feelings Grounded In The Common Baseness People See In One Another.
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Art Arises From Sources Other Than Logic." (p.32)
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The Great European Novel Started Out As Entertainment, And Every True Novelist Is Nostalgic For It. In Fact, The Themes Of Those Great Entertainments Are Terribly Serious-think Of Cervantes!
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Speed Is The Form Of Ecstasy The Technical Revolution Has Bestowed On Man. As Opposed To A Motorcyclist, The Runner Is Always Present In His Body, Forever Required To Think About His Blisters, His Exhaustion; When He Runs He Feels His Weight, His Age, More Conscious Than Ever Of Himself And Of His Time Of Life. This All Changes When Man Delegates The Faculty Of Speed To A Machine: From Then On, His Own Body Is Outside The Process, And He Gives Over To A Speed That Is Noncorporeal, Nonmaterial, Pure Speed, Speed Itself, Ecstasy Speed.
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There Is Such A Thing As Everyday, Ordinary, Vulgar Ecstasy; The Ecstasy Of Anger, The Ecstasy Of Speed At The Wheel, The Ecstasy Of Ear-splitting Noise, Ecstasy In The Soccer Stadium.
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Merely By Being Born Intelligent, You Right Away Find Yourself In Absolute Exile.
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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 Ego-centrism.
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What I Love In A Woman Is Not What She Is In And For Herself, But The Side Of Herself She Turns Towards Me, What She Is For Me. I Love Her As Character In Our Common Love Story. What Wuld Hamlet Be Without The Castle At Elsinore, Without Ophelia, Without All The Concrete Situations He Goes Through, What Would He Be Without The Text Of His Part? What Would Be Left But An Empty, Dumb, Illusory Essence?
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The Only Reason People Want To Be Masters Of The Future Is To Change The Past.
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War And Culture, Those Are The Two Poles Of Europe, Her Heaven And Hell, Her Glory And Shame, And They Cannot Be Separated From One Another. When One Comes To An End, The Other Will End Also And One Cannot End Without The Other. The Fact That No War Has Broken Out In Europe For Fifty Years Is Connected In Some Mysterious Way With The Fact That For Fifty Years No New Picasso Has Appeared Either.
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Perhaps All The Questions We Ask Of Love, To Measure, Test, Probe, And Save It, Have The Additional Effect Of Cutting It Short.
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What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.
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Business Only Has Two Functions - Innovation And Marketing.
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I Have A Strong Will To Love You For Eternity.
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We Don't Know When Our Name Came Into Being Or How Some Distant Ancestor Acquired It. We Don't Understand Our Name At All, We Don't Know Its History And Yet We Bear It With Exalted Fidelity, We Merge With It, We Like It, We Are Ridiculously Proud Of It As If We Had Thought It Up Ourselves In A Moment Of Brilliant Inspiration.
Funny
Humorous
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If I Hadn't Met You, I'd Certainly Have Fallen In Love With Him.
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I Understood That There Was No Escaping The Memories, That I Was Surround By Them. (p.30)
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In Tereza’s Eyes, Books Were The Emblems Of A Secret Brotherhood. For She Had But A Single Weapon Against The World Of Crudity Surrounding Her: The Novels. She Had Read Any Number Of Them, From Fielding To Thomas Mann. They Not Only Offered The Possibility Of An Imaginary Escape From A Life She Found Unsatisfying; They Also Had A Meaning For Her As Physical Objects: She Loved To Walk Down The Street With A Book Under Her Arm. It Had The Same Significance For Her As An Elegant Cane From The Dandy A Century Ago. It Differentiated Her From Others.
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Any New Possibility That Existence Acquires, Even The Least Likely, Transforms Everything About Existence.
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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.
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No Matter How Much We Scorn It, Kitsch Is An Integral Part Of The Human Condition.
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The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.
Pleasure
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Woman Is The Future Of Man. That Means That The World Which Was Once Formed In Man's Image Will Now Be Transformed To The Image Of Woman. The More Technical And Mechanical, Cold And Metallic It Becomes, The More It Will Need The Kind Of Warmth That Only The Woman Can Give It. If We Want To Save The World, We Must Adapt To The Woman, Let Ourselves Be Led By The Woman, Let Ourselves Be Penetrated By The Ewigweiblich, The Eternally Feminine!
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You Can Understand Nothing About Art, Particularly Modern Art, If You Do Not Understand That Imagination Is A Value In Itself.
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The Beauty Of New York Is Unintentional; It Arose Independent Of Human Design, Like A Stalagmite Cavern.
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The Word Change, So Dear To Our Europe, Has Been Given A New Meaning: It No Longer Means A New Stage Of Coherent Development (as It Was Understood By Vico, Hegel Or Marx), But A Shift From One Side To Another, From Front To Back, From The Back To The Left, From The Left To The Front (as Understood By Designers Dreaming Up The Fashion For The Next Season).
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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.
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Solitude: A Sweet Absence Of Looks.
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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.
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The Rediscovered Path, Where Were Left The Traces Of Childhood's Lost Steps.
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Laughter, On The Other Hand, " Petrarch Went On, "is An Explosion That Tears Us Away From The World And Throws Us Back Into Our Own Cold Solitude. Joking Is A Barrier Between Man And The World. Joking Is The Enemy Of Love And Poetry. That's Why I Tell You Yet Again, And You Want To Keep In Mind: Boccaccio Doesn't Understand Love. Love Can Never Be Laughable. Love Has Nothing In Common With Laughter.
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The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question.
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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.
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All Great Novels, All True Novels, Are Bisexual.
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We All Reject Out Of Hand The Idea That The Love Of Our Life May Be Something Light Or Weightless; We Presume Our Love Is What Must Be, That Without It Our Life Would No Longer Be The Same; We Feel That Beethoven Himself, Gloomy And Awe-inspiring, Is Playing The “es Muss Sein!” To Our Own Great Love.
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The Greek Word For "return" Is Nostos. Algos Means "suffering." So Nostalgia Is The Suffering Caused By An Unappeased Yearning To Return.
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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.
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What Does It Mean To Live In Truth? Putting It Negatively Is Easy Enough: It Means Not Lying, Not Hiding, And Not Dissimulating.
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A Person Who Longs To Leave The Place Where He Lives Is An Unhappy Person.
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Jealousy Has The Amazing Power To Illuminate A Single Person In An Intense Beam Of Light, Keeping The Multitude Of Others In Total Darkness.
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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.
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...he Took A Look At The Blond Girl's Eyes And Knew That He Must Not Take Part In The Rigged Game In Which The Ephemeral Passes For The Eternal And The Small For The Big, That He Must Not Take Part In The Rigged Game Called Love.
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Jealousy Isn't A Pleasant Quality, But If It Isn't Overdone (and If It's Combined With Modesty), Apart From Its Inconvenience There's Even Something Touching About It.
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People Are Going Deaf Because Music Is Played Louder And Louder, But Because They're Going Deaf, It Has To Be Played Louder Still.
Reality
People
Deaf
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...she Merely Wished To Find A Way Out Of The Maze. She Knew That She Had Become A Burden To Him: She Took Things Too Seriously, Turning Everything Into A Tragedy, And Failed To Grasp The Lightness And Amusing Insignificance Of Physical Love. How She Wished She Could Learn Lightness! She Yearned For Someone To Help Her Out Of Her Anachronistic Shell.
Tragedy
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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?
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Air
The Very Beginning Of Genesis Tells Us That God Created Man In Order To Give Him Dominion Over Fish And Fowl And All Creatures. Of Course, Genesis Was Written By A Man, Not A Horse.
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Let Us Consider The Critic, Therefore, As A Discoverer Of Discoveries.
Discovery
Criticism
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Being In A Foreign Country Means Walking A Tightrope High Above The Ground Without The Net Afforded A Person By The Country Where He Has His Family, Colleagues, And Friends, And Where He Can Easily Say What He Has To Say In A Language He Has Known From Childhood.
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From The Top Of The Staircase She Sees The London Train, Modern And Elegant, And She Tells Herself Again: Whether It's Good Luck Or Bad To Be Born Onto This Earth, The Best Way To Spend A Life Here Is To Let Yourself Be Carried Along, As I Am Moving At This Moment, By A Cheerful, Noisy Crowd Moving Forward.
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Cheerful
Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.
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Links
For He Was Aware Of The Great Secret Of Life: Women Don't Look For Handsome Men. Women Look For Men Who Have Had Beautiful Women. Having An Ugly Mistress Is Therefore A Fatal Mistake.
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Lying
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Eye
Thinking
Indeed, The Only Truly Serious Questions Are Ones That Even A Child Can Formulate. Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious. They Are The Questions With No Answers. A Question With No Answer Is A Barrier That Cannot Be Breached. In Other Words, It Is Questions With No Answers That Set The Limit Of Human Possibilities, Describe The Boundaries Of Human Existence.
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Limits
A Worker May Be The Hammer's Master, But The Hammer Still Prevails. A Tool Knows Exactly How It Is Meant To Be Handled, While The User Of The Tool Can Only Have An Approximate Idea.
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Hammers
Tools
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Character
Self
Numbers
A Man Who Loses His Privacy Loses Everything. And A Man Who Gives It Up Of His Own Free Will Is A Monster.
Men
Giving
Monsters
No Great Movement Designed To Change The World Can Bear To Be Laughed At Or Belittled. Mockery Is A Rust That Corrodes All It Touches.
Rust
Movement
World
Suspending Moral Judgment Is Not The Immorality Of The Novel; It Is Its Morality.
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Judgment
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Film
How Did The Senator Know That Children Meant Happiness? Could He See Into Their Souls? What If The Moment They Were Out Of Sight, Three Of Them Jumped The Fourth And Began Beating Him Up?
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Sight
Soul
In Irena’s Head The Alcohol Plays A Double Role: It Frees Her Fantasy, Encourages Her Boldness, Makes Her Sensual, And At The Same Time It Dims Her Memory. She Makes Love Wildly, Lasciviously, And At The Same Time The Curtain Of Oblivion Wraps Her Lewdness In An All-concealing Darkness. As If A Poet Were Writing His Greatest Poem With Ink That Instantly Disappears.
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Writing
Play
We Go Through The Present Blindfolded... Only Later, When The Blindfold Is Removed And We Examine The Past, Do We Realize What We've Been Through And Understand What It Means.
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Past
Realizing
Unlike The Puerile Loyalty To A Conviction, Loyalty To A Friend Is A Virtue - Perhaps The Only Virtue, The Last Remaining One.
Loyalty
Lasts
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There Is A Certain Part Of All Of Us That Lives Outside Of Time. Perhaps We Become Aware Of Our Age Only At Exceptional Moments And Most Of The Time We Are Ageless.
Age
Moments
Certain
Mankind's True Moral Test, Its Fundamental Test (which Lies Deeply Buried From View), Consists Of Its Attitude Towards Those Who Are At Its Mercy: Animals. And In This Respect Mankind Has Suffered A Fundamental Debacle, A Debacle So Fundamental That All Others Stem From It.
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Nature
The Moment Kafka Attracts More Attenetion Than Joseph K., Kafka's Posthumous Death Begins.
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Posthumous
Tell Me, Where In Life Is There A Value That Would Make Us Consider Suicide Uncalled For On Principle! Love? Or Friendship? I Guarantee That Friendship Is Not A Bit Less Fickle Than Love And It Is Impossible To Build Anything On It. Self-love? I Wish It Were Possible.
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Self
Guarantees That
Without The Meditative Background That Is Criticism, Works Become Isolated Gestures, Historical Accidents, Soon Forgotten.
Historical
Criticism
Gestures
All Previous Crimes Of The Russian Empire Had Been Committed Under The Cover Of A Discreet Shadow. The Deportation Of A Million Lithuanians, The Murder Of Hundreds Of Thousands Of Poles, The Liquidation Of The Crimean Tatars Remain In Our Memory, But No Photographic Documentation Exists; Sooner Or Later They Will Therefore Be Proclaimed As Fabrications.
Memories
Shadow
Empires
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.
Past
People
Political
Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!
There Are Moments In Life When A Man Retreats Defensively, When He Must Give Ground, When He Must Surrender Less Important Positions In Order To Protect The More Important Ones. But Should It Come To The Very Last, The Most Important One, At This Point A Man Must Halt And Stand Firm If He Doesn't Want To Begin Life All Over Again With Idle Hands And A Feeling Of Being Shipwrecked.
Men
Hands
Order
...in Our Time Art Is Encrusted With A Noisy, Opaque, Logorrhea Of Theory That Prevents A Work From Coming Into Direct, Media Free, Non-interpreted Contact With Its Viewer (its Reader, Its Listener)
Art
Media
Opaque
The Pressure To Make Public Retractions Of Past Statements - There's Something Medieval About It. What Does It Mean, Anyway, To 'retract' What You've Said? How Can Anyone State Categorically That A Thought He Once Had Is No Longer Valid? In Modern Times An Idea Can Be Refuted, Yes, But Not Retracted.
Mean
Past
Ideas
The Senator Had Only One Argument In His Favour: His Feeling. When The Heart Speaks, The Mind Finds It Indecent To Object. In The Realm Of Kitsch, The Dictatorship Of The Heart Reigns Supreme.
Heart
Feelings
Mind
It Takes So Little, So Infinitely Little, For A Person To Cross The Border Beyond Which Everything Loses Meaning: Love, Convictions, Faith, History. Human Life -- And Herein Lies Its Secret -- Takes Place In The Immediate Proximity Of That Border, Even In Direct Contact With It; It Is Not Miles Away, But A Fraction Of An Inch.
Lying
Secret
Borders
No Love Can Survive Muteness.
No Love
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.
Play
Rivers
Next Day
Mankind's Real Moral Test, A Test So Radical And So Deep That It Escapes Our Gaze, Is Probably The One Of Its Relations With Those That Are The Most At Its Mercy; The Animals.
Real
Animal
Tests
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.
Dream
Communication
Games
The Important Thing Is To Abide By The Rule Of Threes. Either You See A Woman Three Times In Quick Succession And Then Never Again, Or You Maintain Relations Over The Years But Make Sure That The Rendezvous Are At Least Three Weeks Apart.
Years
Important
Three
To Ensure That The Self Doesn't Shrink, To See That It Holds On To Its Volume, Memories Have To Be Watered Like Potted Flowers, And The Watering Calls For Regular Contact With The Witnesses Of The Past, That Is To Say, With Friends.
Friendship
Memories
Flower
Sleep In My Arms. Like A Baby Bird. Like A Broom Among Brooms... In A Broom Closet. Like A Tiny Parrot. Like A Whistle. Like A Little Song. A Song Sung By A Forest... Within A Forest... A Thousand Years Ago.
Song
Baby
Sleep
The More Vast The Amount Of Time We've Left Behind Us, The More Irresistible Is The Voice Calling Us To Return To It.
Voice
Calling
Return
Mysticism And Exaggeration Go Together. A Mystic Must Not Fear Ridicule If He Is To Push All The Way To The Limits Of Humility Or The Limits Of Delight.
Humility
Exaggeration Is
Together
For Everyone Is Pained By The Thought Of Disappearing, Unheard And Unseen, Into An Indifferent Universe, And Because Of That Everyone Wants, While There Is Still Time, To Turn Himself Into A Universe Of Words.
Unseen
Want
Disappear
Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.
Relationship
Love Is
Violence
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?
Men
Self
Hysteria
Nothing Yet. I've Been Waiting." "for What?" She Made No Response. She Could Not Tell Him That She Had Been Waiting For Him.
Waiting
Made
Response
She Was Aware That In Love Even The Most Passionate Idealism Will Not Rid The Body's Surface Of Its Terrible, Basic Importance.
Body
Passionate
Surface
When Graves Are Covered With Stones, The Dead Can No Longer Get Out. But The Dead Can't Go Out Anyway! What Difference Does It Make Whether They're Covered With Soil Or Stones?
Differences
Doe
Stones
Ah, Ladies And Gentlemen, A Man Lives A Sad Life When He Cannot Take Anything Or Anyone Seriously.
Men
Sad Life
Gentleman
Fortunately Women Have The Miraculous Ability To Change The Meaning Of Their Actions After The Event.
Women
Events
Action
Between The Approximation Of The Idea And The Precision Of Reality There Was A Small Gap Of The Unimaginable, And It Was This Hiatus That Gave Him No Rest.
Reality
Ideas
Gaps
Only From The Perspective Of Such A Utopia Is It Possible To Use The Concepts Of Pessimism And Optimism With Full Justification: An Optimist Is Someone Who Thinks That On Planet Number Five The History Of Mankind Will Be Less Bloody. A Pessimist Is One Who Thinks Otherwise.
Thinking
Numbers
Optimism
True Human Goodness, In All Its Purity And Freedom, Can Come To The Fore Only When Its Recipient Has No Power.
Animal
Compassion
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
By Giving The Love Act A Name, If Only An Innocent Little Word Like, "it," He Paved The Way For Other Words, Words That Would Reflect Physical Love As In A Set Of Mirrors.
Mirrors
Names
Giving
Revolution In Love’. Can You Tell Me What You Mean By That? Do You Want Free Love As Against Bourgeois Marriage, Or Monogamy As Against Bourgeois Promiscuity?
Mean
Want
Revolution
Which Doesn't Mean, Of Course, That I'd Stopped Loving Her, That I'd Forgotten Her, Or That Her Image Had Paled; On The Contrary; In The Form Of A Quiet Nostalgia She Remained Constantly Within Me; I Longed For Her As One Longs For Something Definitively Lost.
Mean
Nostalgia
Quiet
In The Sunset Of Dissolution, Everything Is Illuminated By The Aura Of Nostalgia, Even The Guillotine.
Sunset
Auras
Unbearable
I Cannot Hate Them Because Nothing Binds Me To Them; I Have Nothing In Common With Them.
Hate
Common
Those Who Consider The Devil To Be A Partisan Of Evil And Angels To Be Warriors For Good Accept The Demagogy Of The Angels. Things Are Clearly More Complicated.
Spiritual
Angel
Warrior
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.
Success
Fall
Voice
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.
Love Is
Men
Voice
A Great Deal Has Been Said About Love At First Sight; I Am Perfectly Aware Of Love's Retrospective Tendency To Make A Legend Of Itself, Turn Its Beginnings Into Myth; So I Don't Want To Assert That It Was Love; But I Have No Doubt There Was A Kind Of Clairvoyance At Work: I Immediately Felt, Sensed, Grasped The Essence Of Lucie's Being Or, To Be More Precise, The Essence Of What She Was Later To Become For Me; Lucie Had Revealed Herself To Me The Way Religious Truth Reveals Itself.
Religious
Sight
Essence
Two People In Love, Alone, Isolated From The World, That's Beautiful.
Love
Beautiful
Two
Human Life Occurs Only Once, And The Reason We Cannot Determine Which Of Our Decisions Are Good And Which Bad Is That In A Given Situation We Can Make Only One Decision; We Are Not Granted A Second, Third, Or Fourth Life In Which To Compare Various Decisions.
Decision
Granted
Reason
She Knew, Of Course That She Was Being Supremely Unfair, That Franz Was The Best Man She Ever Had- He Was Intelligent, He Understood Her Paintings, He Was Handsome And Good-but The More She Thought About It, The More She Longed To Ravish His Intelligence, Defile His Kindheartedness, And Violate His Powerless Strength
Intelligent
Men
Handsome
Is A Novel Anything But A Trap Set For A Hero?
Hero
Traps
Novel
Until That Time, Her Betrayals Had Filled Her With Excitement And Joy, Because They Opened Up New Paths To New Adventures Of Betrayal. But What If The Paths Came To An End? One Could Betray One's Parents, Husband, Country, Love, But When Parents, Husband, Country, And Love Were Gone - What Was Left To Betray?
Country
Husband
Betrayal
Ambition Is A Poor Excuse For Not Having Sense Enough To Be Lazy.
Inspirational
Funny
Ambition
For A Novelist, A Given Historic Situation Is An Anthropologic Laboratory In Which He Explores His Basic Question: What Is Human Existence?
Novelists
Historic
Given
Yes, It Was Too Late, And Sabina Knew She Would Leave Paris, Move On, And On Again, Because Were She To Die Here They Would Cover Her Up With A Stone, And In The Mind Of A Woman For Whom No Place Is Home The Thought Of An End To All Flight Is Unbearable.
Moving
Home
Paris
Einmal Ist Keinmal, Says Tomas To Himself. What Happens But Once, Says The German Adage, Might As Well Not Have Happened At All. If We Have Only One Life To Live, We Might As Well Not Have Lived At All.
Life
Might
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
People Derived Too Much Pleasure From Seeing Their Fellow Man Morally Humiliated To Spoil That Pleasure By Hearing Out An Explanation.
Men
People
Fellow Man
I Am Not In Favor Of Imposing Happiness On People. Everyone Has A Right To His Bad Wine, To His Stupidity, And To His Dirty Fingernails.
Dirty
Wine
People
If Excitement Is A Mechanism Our Creator Uses For His Own Amusement, Love Is Something That Belongs To Us Alone And Enables Us To Flee The Creator. Love Is Our Freedom. Love Lies Beyond "es Muss Sein!
Lying
Love Is
Use
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.
Memories
Lying
Believe
At The End Of True Love Is Death, And Only The Love That Ends In Death Is Love.
Love Is
Ends
True Love Is
To Die; To Decide To Die; That's Much Easier For An Adolescent Than For An Adult. What? Doesn't Death Strip An Adolescent Of A Far Larger Portion Of Future? Certainly It Does, But For A Young Person, The Future Is A Remote, Abstract, Unreal Thing He Doesn't Really Believe In.
Believe
Adults
Doe
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.
Eye
People
Dreamer
Nothing Requires A Greater Effort Of Thought Than Arguments To Justify The Rule Of Non-thought.
Effort
Argument
Justify
He Took Over Anger To Intimidate Subordinates, And In Time Anger Took Over Him.
Anger
Conflict
Intimidating
I Have No Mission. No One Has.
Missions
The Novel Is A Territory Where One Does Not Make Assertions; It Is A Territory Of Play And Of Hypotheses.
Writing
Play
Doe
Since The Insignificance Of All Things Is Our Lot, We Should Not Bear It As An Affliction But Learn To Enjoy It.
Affliction
Bears
Should
Necessity Knows No Magic Formulae-they Are All Left To Chance. If A Love Is To Be Unforgettable, Fortuities Must Immediately Start Fluttering Down To It Like Birds To Francis Of Assisi's Shoulders.
Love Is
Bird
Magic
We Pass Through The Present With Our Eyes Blindfolded. We Are Permitted Merely To Sense And Guess At What We Are Actually Experiencing. Only Later When The Cloth Is Untied Can We Glance At The Past And Find Out What We Have Experienced And What Meaning It Has.
Eye
Past
Glances
If I Had Two Lives, In One Life I Could Invite Her To Stay At My Place, And In The Second Life I Could Kick Her Out. Then I Could Compare And See Which Had Been The Best Thing To Do. But We Only Live Once. Life's So Light. Like An Outline We Can't Ever Fill In Or Correct... Make Any Better. It's Frightening".
Light
Two
Compare
Love Is A Desire For That Lost Half Of Ourselves.
Love Is
Desire
Half
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.
Men
Able
Accepting
Cemeteries In Bohemia Are Like Gardens. The Graves Are Covered With Grass And Colourful Flowers. Modest Tombstones Are Lost In The Greenery. When The Sun Goes Down, The Cemetery Sparkles With Tiny Candles... No Matter How Brutal Life Becomes, Peace Always Reigns In The Cemetery. Even In Wartime, Even In Hitler's Time, Even In Stalin's Time.
Tombstone
Flower
Garden
Looking Out Over The Courtyard At The Dirty Walls, He Realized He Had No Idea Whether It Was Hysteria Or Love.
Wall
Dirty
Ideas
Laughing Deeply Is Living Deeply.
Happiness
Laughing
The Worth Of A Human Being Lies In The Ability To Extend Oneself, To Go Outside Oneself, To Exist In And For Other People.
Lying
People
Ability
In The Love Poetry Of Every Age, The Woman Longs To Be Weighed Down By The Man's Body.
Men
Age
Body
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.
Book
Ideas
People
Loves Are Like Empires: When The Idea They Are Founded On Crumbles, They, Too, Fade Away.
Ideas
Empires
Unbearable
And There Lies The Horror: The Past We Remember Is Devoid Of Time. Impossible To Reexperience A Love The Way We Reread A Book Or Resee A Film.
Lying
Book
Past
[w]e Must Never Allow The Future To Collapse Under The Burden Of Memory.
Memories
Burden
Collapse
Once Her Love Had Been Publicized, It Would Gain Weight, Become A Burden.
Weight
Gains
Burden
The Bloody Massacre In Bangladesh Quickly Covered Over The Memory Of The Russian Invasion Of Czechoslovakia, The Assassination Of Allende Drowned Out The Groans Of Bangladesh, The War In The Sinai Desert Made People Forget Allende, The Cambodian Massacre Made People Forget Sinai, And So On And So Forth Until Ultimately Everyone Lets Everything Be Forgotten.
Memories
War
People
The Sound Of Laughter Is Like The Vaulted Dome Of A Temple Of Happiness.
Happiness
Laughter
Joy
The Ludicrous Element In Our Feeling Does Not Make Them Any Less Authentic.
Feelings
Doe
Elements
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!
Running
Children
Nice
Sensuality Is The Total Mobilization Of The Senses: An Individual Observes His Partner Intently, Straining To Catch Every Sound.
Sound
Individual
Partners
What Is Unique About The "i" Hides Itself Exactly In What Is Unimaginable About A Person. All We Are Able To Imagine Is What Makes Everyone Like Everyone Else, What People Have In Common. The Individual "i" Is What Differs From The Common Stock, That Is, What Cannot Be Guessed At Or Calculated, What Must Be Unveiled, Uncovered, Conquered.
Unique
People
Able
Nudity Is The Uniform Of The Other Side... Nudity Is A Shroud.
Sides
Uniforms
Nudity
La Memoria No Guarda Películas, Guarda Fotografías.
Attaching Love To Sex Is One Of The Most Bizarre Ideas The Creator Ever Had.
Sex
Ideas
Bizarre
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.
Love
Dream
Memories
No Episode Is A Priori Condemned To Remain An Episode Forever, For Every Event, No Matter How Trivial, Conceals Within Itself The Possibility Of Sooner Or Later Becoming The Cause Of Other Events And Thus Changing Into A Story Or An Adventure. Episodes Are Like Land Mines. The Majority Of Them Never Explode, But The Most Unremarkable Of Them May Someday Turn Into A Story That Will Prove Fateful To You.
Adventure
Land
Forever
If Our Planet Has Seen Some Eighty Billion People It Is Difficult To Suppose Hat Every Individual Has Had His Or Her Own Repertory Of Gestures. Arithmetically, It Is Simply Impossible. Without The Slightest Doubt, There Are Far Fewer Gestures In The World Than There Are Individuals. That Finding Leads Us To A Shocking Conclusion: A Gesture Is More Individual Than An Individual. We Could Put It In The Form Of An Aphorism: Many People, Few Gestures.
People
Doubt
World
Our Dreams Prove That To Imagine - To Dream About Things That Have Not Happened - Is Among Mankind's Deepest Needs.
Dream
Needs
Imagine
Flirting Is A Promise Of Sexual Intercourse Without A Guarantee.
Flirting
Promise
Guarantees
Sometimes You Make Up Your Mind About Something Without Knowing Why, And Your Decision Persists By The Power Of Inertia. Every Year It Gets Harder To Change.
Years
Knowing
Decision
Culture Is Perishing In Overproduction, In An Avalanche Of Words, In The Madness Of Quantity.
Culture
Avalanches
Madness
Because Beyond Their Practical Function, All Gestures Have A Meaning That Exceeds The Intention Of Those Who Make Them; When People In Bathing Suits Fling Themselves Into The Water, It Is Joy Itself That Shows In The Gesture, Notwithstanding Any Sadness The Divers May Actually Feel. When Someone Jumps Into The Water Fully Clothed, It Is Another Thing Entirely: The Only Person Who Jumps Into The Water Fully Clothed Is A Person Trying To Drown; And A Person Trying To Drown Does Not Dive Headfirst; He Lets Himself Fall: Thus Speaks The Immemorial Language Of Gestures.
Fall
Sadness
Water
No One Can Get Really Drunk On A Novel Or A Painting, But Who Can Help Getting Drunk On Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata For Two Pianos And Percussion, Or The Reatles' White Album?
Music
Two
Piano
The Reign Of Imagagology Begins Where History Ends.
History
Reign
Ends
The Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.
Evil
Borders
Fuzzy
It Was Futile To Attack With Reason The Stout Wall Of Irrational Feelings That, As Is Known, Is The Stuff Of Which The Female Mind Is Made.
Wall
Feelings
Mind
Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.
Rebellion
The First Step In Liquidating A People 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 That Nation Will Begin To Forget What It Is And What It Was... The Struggle Of Man Against Power Is The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting.
Memories
Struggle
Book
How Goodness Heightens Beauty!
Beauty
Body Image
Goodness
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.
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Claims
Partners
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