Milan Kundera Unbearable Quotations

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

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.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

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.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.