There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos. Milan Kundera More Quotes by Milan Kundera More Quotes From Milan Kundera Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. Milan Kundera chance speak messages There is no perfection only life Milan Kundera perfection 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. Milan Kundera knowing decision years God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads. Milan Kundera has-beens kind dog Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought. Milan Kundera justify argument effort Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound. Milan Kundera individual partners sound 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. Milan Kundera tests real animal 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. Milan Kundera exaggeration-is humility together 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 squares men fall People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still. Milan Kundera deaf reality people 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. Milan Kundera unseen disappear want Fortunately, I read (the books) without knowing what I was in for, and the best thing that can ever happen to a reader happened to me: I loved something that, by conviction (or by my nature) I should not have loved Milan Kundera conviction knowing book When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp? Milan Kundera bottles wine mean The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. Milan Kundera possibility borders character Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything. Milan Kundera relationship sex facts To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth. Milan Kundera doe writing mean Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten. Milan Kundera gestures historical criticism For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence? Milan Kundera historic novelists given You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself. Milan Kundera modern imagination art Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding. Milan Kundera understanding age life