Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Milan Kundera

Quote by Milan Kundera

“an old villa surrounded by a garden looked to them like the image of a comforting home, the dream of an idyll long past.”

Quote by Milan Kundera

Book:Ignorance
Create image

Work

Ignorance

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is a renowned Czech-French writer known for his profound psychological insights and unique narrative techniques. His works often explore themes of personal freedom, love, morality, and existentialism, with notable titles including 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' and 'The Joke'. more

You May Also Like

“Until then her view of time was the present moving forward and devouring the future; she either feared its swiftness (when she was awaiting something difficult) or rebelled at its slowness (when she was awaiting something fine). Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past. She sees a young man disconnecting himself from her life and going away, forevermore out of her reach. Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia.”

Nostalgia
Book:Ignorance
Create image

“an emigres artistic problem: the numerically equal blocks of a lifetime are unequal in weight, depending on whether they comprise young or adult years. The adult years may be richer and more important for life and for creative activity both, but the subconscious, memory, language, all the understructure of creativity, are formed very early; for a doctor, that won't make problems, but for a novelist or a composer, leaving the place to which his imagination, his obsessions, and thus his fundamental themes are bound could make for a kind of ripping apart. He must mobilize all his powers, all his artists wiles, to turn the disadvantages of that situation to benefits. [...] Only returning to the native land after a long absence can reveal the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence.”

ExistenceNostalgiaEmigration
Book:Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts
Create image

“We cannot turn back the clock and relive cherished pastimes. We move beyond our origins. A person must make their way in an evolving social, political, and economic world order. We must not be too quick writing off the influence of our prior experiences, because the long tentacles the past remain vibrant strands within us. While the past does not cast our future in stone, its durable mold shapes our present. The ingrained strumming of our personal histories, sentimental or otherwise, also portents what might come along in our future.”

PastFutureNostalgiaPresent MomentPresentFuture QuotesPastimes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Борьба за "прекрасное прошлое" преграждает [путь] любым возможностям мыслей о будущем. Как сварливая жена и мать, "отдавшая лучшие годы" другому времени, мы не способны понимать настоящее и не хотим думать о том, что ждет нас дальше.”

HistoryFutureMemoryBurdenNostalgiaUseful Past
Book:Художник войны
Create image

“— Дивився на своє місто. З вікон розбитого старого терміналу [...] Здавалося, можна вийти й піти додому, а ні — стріляють. Слухаю, намагаючись уявити, як це — бачити знайомі вулиці, знати, що десь там вікно твоєї кімнати, твої книжки, зів’ялі без нагляду бегонії у вазонках, коти у сусідів або у під’їзді, безпритульні, прислухаються до кроків, чи ти, бува, не повертаєшся...”

WarSightNostalgiaLandscapeHomelandAirportDonbasDonetsk
Book:Волонтери. Мобілізація добра
Create image