1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.

For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.

What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure.

Was excitement really a mere step away from laughter?

Raised as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise: life in Paradise was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom.

Laughter was like an enormous trap waiting patiently in the room with them; but hidden behind a thin wall.

Não existe meio de verificar qual é a boa decisão, pois não existe termo de comparação. Tudo é vivido pela primeira vez e sem preparação. Como se um ator entrasse em cena sem nunca ter ensaiado. Mas o que pode valer a vida, se o primeiro ensaio da vida já é a própria vida?

isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? the potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? the drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?

He thought: that's certainly how it starts. One day a person puts his legs up on a bench, then night comes and he falls asleep. That's how it happens that one fine day a person joins the tramps and turns into one of them.