Top 500 Milan Kundera Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Elisabeth, can’t you imagine that you could love someone so terribly that just because of it you couldn’t go to bed with him?”

— Milan Kundera

352. “The greatest adventure of our lives is the absence of adventure.”

— Milan Kundera

353. “A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.”

— Milan Kundera

354. “Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.”

— Milan Kundera

355. “He felt responsible for his fate, but his fate felt no responsibility for him.”

— Milan Kundera

356. “A man able to think isn’t defeated – even when he is defeated.”

— Milan Kundera

357. “He yearned for one long embrace with Sabina, yearned never to say another sentence, another word, to let his orgasm fuse with that orgiastic thunder of music. And lulled by that blissful imaginary uproar, he fell asleep.”

— Milan Kundera

358. “Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.”

— Milan Kundera

359. “Human life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other.”

— Milan Kundera

360. “It is entirely possible,” said Tomas, “that a female dog addressed continually by a male name will develop lesbian tendencies.”

— Milan Kundera

361. “Silence lay between them like an agony.”

— Milan Kundera

362. “No, it was not superstition, it was a sense of beauty that cured her of her depression and imbued her with a new will to live.”

— Milan Kundera

363. “He who gives himself up like a prisoner of war must give up his weapons as well. And deprived in advance of defense against a possible blow, he cannot help wondering when the blow will fall. That is why I can say that for Franz, love meant the constant expectation of a blow.”

— Milan Kundera

364. “Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.”

— Milan Kundera

365. “The mediation of a woman is capable of imposing on hatred certain qualities characteristic of affection, for example curiosity, carnal interest, the urge to cross the threshold of intimacy.”

— Milan Kundera

366. “A person’s destiny often ends before his death.”

— Milan Kundera

367. “By writing books, a man turns into a universe.”

— Milan Kundera

368. “Jetzt hatte sie begriffen! Wer sich erinnern will, darf nicht an einem Ort verweilen und warten, bis die Erinnerungen von selbst kommen! Die Erinnerungen haben sich in alle Himmelsrichtungen verstreut, und man muss reisen, wenn man sie wiederfinden und aus ihren Schlupfwinkeln holen will!”

— Milan Kundera

369. “Now we are longtime outcasts, flying through the emptiness of time in a straight line. Yet somewhere deep down a thin thread still ties us to that far-off misty Paradise, where Adam leans over a well and, unlike Narcissus, never even suspects that the pale yellow blotch appearing in it is he himself. The longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man.”

— Milan Kundera

370. “I know you’re quiet a workman on God’s eternal construction site and don’t like hearing about demolition, but what can I do? Myself, I’m not one of God’s bricklayers. Besides, if God’s bricklayers built real walls, I doubt we’d be able to demolish them. But instead of walls all I see is stage sets. And stage sets are made to be demolished.”

— Milan Kundera

371. “The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about.”

— Milan Kundera

372. “And I felt fear. Fear of that bleak horizon, fear of that destiny. I felt my soul shriveling, I felt it retreating, and I was frightened by the thought that it could not escape its encirclement.”

— Milan Kundera

373. “Holding her tightly in his arms and feeling her body tremble, he thought he could not endure his love.”

— Milan Kundera

374. “Whe you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful and polite, you have a hard time reminding yourself that nothing he says is true, that nothing is sincere. Maintaining nonbelief requires a tremendous effort and the proper training.”

— Milan Kundera

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

— Milan Kundera

376. “She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman’s genitals was through her sadness.”

— Milan Kundera

377. “Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.”

— Milan Kundera

378. “Actually, he had always preferred the unreal to the real.”

— Milan Kundera

379. “Atunci am inteles semnificatia magica a cercului. Cand iesi din rand mai poti reveni. Randul este o formatiune deschisa. Cercul insa se inchide, si-l parasesti fara posibilitatea intoarcerii.”

— Milan Kundera

380. “Certainty. Life’s last and kindest gift.”

— Milan Kundera

381. “The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.”

— Milan Kundera

382. “All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.”

— Milan Kundera

383. “Solo como un cuadro de Van Gogh bajo la mirada idiota de los turistas. Solo como la Luna que nadie ve.”

— Milan Kundera

384. “The only thing that makes me somewhat sceptical regarding human procreation is the unintelligent selection of parents. Some of the most unattractive individuals in the world feel they must multiply at all costs. They are apparently under the illusion that the burden of ugliness becomes lighter if it is shared with descendants.”

— Milan Kundera

385. “Tamina feels that the eyes of a single outsider are enough to destroy the worth of her personal diaries, while Goethe thinks that if a single individual fails to set eyes on his lines, that individual calls his–Goethe’s–entire existence into question. The difference between Tamina and Goethe is the difference between human being and writer.”

— Milan Kundera

386. “The scene taking place illustrates an immemorial error of men: having appropriated the role of seducers, they never even consider any women but the ones they might desire; the idea doesn’t occur to them that a woman who is ugly or old, or who simply stands outside their own erotic imaginings, might want to possess them.”

— Milan Kundera

387. “She came from a land where revolutionary illusion had long since faded but where the thing he admired most in revolution remained: life on a large scale; a life of risk, daring, and the danger of death. Sabina had renewed his faith in the grandeur of human endeavour. Superimposing the painful drama of her country on her person, he found her even more beautiful.”

— Milan Kundera

388. “The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful.”

— Milan Kundera

389. “Waking up was sheer delight for him: he always showed a naive and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased. She, on the other hand, awoke with great reluctance, with a desire to stave off the day by keeping her eyes closed.”

— Milan Kundera

390. “Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the momemnt he penetrated sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. The darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, vision less; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us.”

— Milan Kundera

391. “She fixed him with a long careful, searching stare that was not devoid of irony’s intelligent sparkle.”

— Milan Kundera

392. “The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. This pronouncement seems to state the obvious and yet it is false. Men grow old, the end grows near, each moment becomes more and more valuable and there is no time to waste on recollection. It’s important to understand the mathematical paradox in nostalgia, that it is most powerful in early youth, when the volume of life that has passed is quite small.”

— Milan Kundera

393. “Love is a battle?” said Franz. “Well, I don’t feel at all like fighting.” And he left.”

— Milan Kundera

394. “First he sympathized with Cuba, then with China, and when the cruelty of their regimes began to appall him, he resigned himself with a sigh to a sea of words with no weight and no resemblance to life.”

— Milan Kundera

395. “Don’t forget that not only was Socrates ugly but also that many famous women lovers did not distinguish themselves at all by their physical perfection. Aesthetic racism is almost always a sign of inexperience. Those who have not made their way far enough into the world of amorous delights judge women only by what can be seen. But those who really know women understand that the eye reveals only a minute fraction of what a woman can offer us.”

— Milan Kundera

396. “I have to lie, if I don’t want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself.”

— Milan Kundera

397. “When a woman doesn’t live sufficiently through her body, she comes to see the body as an enemy.”

— Milan Kundera

398. “Aren’t we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?”

— Milan Kundera

399. “The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.”

— Milan Kundera

400. “The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.”

— Milan Kundera