Unbearable Lightness Of Being Quotes

“When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. 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, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“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!”
― Milan Kundera

“Behold how this drop of seawater
has taken so many forms and names;
it has existed as mist, cloud, rain, dew, and mud,
then plant, animal, and Perfect man;
and yet it was a drop of water
from which these things appeared.
Even so this universe of reason, soul, heavens, and bodies,
was but a drop of water in its beginning and ending.

...When a wave strikes it, the world vanishes;
and when the appointed time comes to heaven and stars,
their being is lost in not being.”
― Mahmud Shabistari

“Anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself.”
― Milan Kundera

“...man is as much a parasite on the cow as the tapeworm is on man: We have sucked their udders like leeches. "Man the cow parasite" is probably how non-man defines man in his zoology books”
― Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Let the planet be convulsed with exploding bombs.”
― Milan Kundera

“He who gives himself up like a prisoner of war must give up his weapons as well. And deprived in advance of defense against a possible blow, he cannot help wondering when the blow will fall. That is why I can say that for Franz, love meant the constant expectation of a blow.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Her drama was no drama of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“And in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable”
― Milan Kundera

“He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural.

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.

Was it better to be with Tereza or to remain alone?

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being