“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 e...”
Work
Interweaves story and dream, past and present, and philosophy and poetry in a sardonic and erotic tale of two couples--Tomas and Teresa, and Sabina and her Swiss lover, Gerhart.
Quotes
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Milan Kundera
Canonical work source
“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 e...”
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
“تذكر عندها أسطورة أفلاطون الشهيرة «المأدبة»: ففي السابق كان البشر مزدوجي الجنس فقسّمهم الله إلى أنصاف تهيم عبر العالم مفتشة بعضها عن بعض. الحب هو تلك الرغبة في إيجاد النصف الآخر المفقود من أ...”
“الوقت الإنساني لا يسير في شكل دائري بل يتقدم في خط مستقيم. من هنا، لا يمكن للإنسان أن يكون سعيداً لأن السعادة رغبة في التكرار.”
“Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.”
“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...”
“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 l...”
“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...”
“Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional e...”
“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 ex...”
“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
“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.”
“What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.”
“I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.”
“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 longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.”
“Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs an...”
“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.”
“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 v...”
“Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to b...”
“But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”
“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, f...”
“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?”
“لم يكونا متحدين بحنان إلَّا في الليل أثناء النوم. كانا يمسكان دائماً بأيديهما فتُنسى عندئذ الهاوية (هاوية ضوء النهار) التي كانت تفصل بينهما. ولكن هذه الليالي لم تكن تعطي توماس لا الوقت ولا ا...”