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Unbearable Lightness Quotes

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Unbearable Lightness Quotes

“I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.”

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Book:Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
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“I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.”

ThinkingBelieveHumansHeartStatesEarthFallFeltCenturyPoetMy HeartGoodnessInventionChestsItalianHeelsRomantic LoveConstructsUnbearableLightnessAxesUnpreparedSwollenUnbearable LightnessHead Over Heels
Book:What's So Amazing about Grace?
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“The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fullfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”

MenRealEarthCausesHalfOur LivesAirMovementWeightAbsolutesBurdenAbsenceIntenseHeightTruthfulSoarInsignificantLightersLightnessUnbearable Lightness Of BeingUnbearable Lightness
Author:Milan Kundera
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“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.”

DogLetting GoStressBoringGloriousAfternoonRescueMy DogDoing NothingPuppyEdenCanineLightnessDog LoverPawsDog TrainingPoodlesPuppy DogPet DogOld DogDog LovePet LossDog RescueUnbearable Lightness Of BeingGreat DogPoodle DogsPuppies And DogsCute DogGreat PetInspirational DogCat DogUnbearable LightnessAnimals In NatureTwo DogsCute PuppyDogs And LifeAnimal RescueDog LossI Love My DogFunny PuppyLove My DogPuppy LoveRetrieversGood DogShort DogPug DogsPuppies And LoveLost DogTerriersLoving DogLabrador DogsGrooming DogsDog WalkingDog MemorialPet Memorial
Author:Milan Kundera
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“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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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 interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“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.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“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 at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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“When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. 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.”

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Author:Milan Kundera
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