The Quotes canon

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Kitsch2 quotes
Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. — Milan Kundera · 1985None among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Love2 quotes
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. — Milan Kundera · 1984The 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... 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 · 1984
Memory2 quotes
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... 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 · 1984The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Children1 quote
Children are the future not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Compassion1 quote
For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes. — Milan Kundera · 1984
The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke us and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Emotions1 quote
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Empathy1 quote
For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Escape1 quote
A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person. — Milan Kundera · 1984
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Happiness1 quote
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 · 1984
History1 quote
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Home1 quote
A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of its attitudes towards those who are at its mercy: animals. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Melancholy1 quote
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Nostalgia1 quote
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Oppression1 quote
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Reason1 quote
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Children are the future not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future. — Milan Kundera · 1979
The future1 quote
Children are the future not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future. — Milan Kundera · 1979
The heart1 quote
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
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 · 1984
The mind1 quote
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
The past1 quote
The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke us and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. — Milan Kundera · 1979
Time1 quote
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 · 1984