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Time Quotes by Milan Kundera

103 Time quotes by Milan Kundera

All Time quotes Milan Kundera’s page

We go through the present blindfolded, only later seeing the past's shape. The future is described as an empty void that can cause anxiety, while the past is full of life that can irritate or wound. Predictions often reveal more about the people who make them than about any future events.

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Young is the one that plunges in the future and never looks back.

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“In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted”

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Beauty is a rebellion against time.

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Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

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“Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

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“Y como en aquel momento no tenía nada con que obsequiar al mundo, obsequiaba a Klara. Al menos con promesas”

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People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no…

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The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.

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The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.

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Children are the future, because mankind is moving more and more towards infancy.

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“People meet in the course of life, they talk together, they discuss, they quarrel, without realizing that they're talking to one another…

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For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants,…

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To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like…

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The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and…

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“What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is…

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Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can…

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You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored…

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But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum…

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“The feeling, the irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of…

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Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of…

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“Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and…

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“That’s another enigma about memory, more basic than all the rest: do recollections have some measurable temporal volume? do they unfold over…

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“Even though man himself is mortal, he can imagine neither the end of space nor of time nor of history nor of…

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There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely.…

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Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is…

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“Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves…

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“I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore…

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“All this time he was sitting up in bed and looking at the woman who was lying beside him and holding his…

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“We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of…

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“Having had occasion in the past to observe Communist statesmen, I saw with surprise that they were often extremely critical of the…

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“From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was…

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“Tereza tried to see herself through her body. That is why, from girlhood on, she would stand before the mirror so often.…

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“What troubled her so, she thinks, is the dream's effect of nullifying the present. For she is passionately attached to her present;…

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“Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the…

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Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.

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So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.

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“At what exact moment did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie? Where was the border? Where is the border?”

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The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to…

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[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

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More by Milan Kundera

“The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent,…

“From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was not so…

“Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it. We've always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That's…

The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.

Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have…

“Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.”

“Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born…

Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end." Love is a battle?" said Franz.…

“He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural. We can never know what to…

“Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that…

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

“Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the…

“Os extremos delimitam a fronteira para além da qual a vida termina, e a paixão pelo extremismo, tanto em arte como em política, é…

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by…

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