No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
کسی که خود را خارج از دنیا می داند، به رنجهای دنیا حساس نیستمیلان کوندِرا، جاودانگی
هناك كتب للنهار وكتب أخرى لايمكن قراءتها إلا في الليل .*
للحياة التي نخلفها وراءنا عادةُ الخروج السيئة من الظلمات، تقديم الشكايات ، وفرض الأحكام علينا .
لقد تأصل لدي عدم التصديق ، إلى حد أنه حين يفضي إليّ امرؤ بما يحب أو لا يحب ، لم أكن أحمل كل هذا على محمل الجد أو لم أكن ، بصورة أكثر دقة ، أرى فيه سوى مجرد شهادة على الصورة التي يريد إعطاءها عن نفسه !...
الإنسان ينسج حياته على غير علم منه وفقاً لقوانين الجمال حتى في لحظات اليأس الأكثر قتامة
Life is like weeds
[M]an has always harbored the desire to rewrite his own biography, to change the past, to wipe out tracks, both his own and other's. (p.130)
[Large countries'] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unk...
When his wife was at his side, she was also in front of him, marking out the horizon of his life. Now the horizon is empty: the view has changed.
We have no idea any more what it means to feel guilty. The communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them, murdurers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out...
Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.
She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than...
In the kingdom of kitsch you would be a monster
I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we co...
I have no mission. No one has.
Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed into the rabbit in her arms .
He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.
Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.