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Ignorance QUOTES

Ignorance QUOTES

1 " How was she to reconcile men's desire with the desire to be beautiful in their eyes? At first she had tried for a compromise (desperate journeys abroad, where nobody knew her and no indiscretion could betray her); then, later on, she had gone radical and sacrificed her erotic life to her beauty. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

2 " We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

3 " She admired her passion, knowing that passion is by definition excessive. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

4 " for the first time in his life, sex is located away from all danger, away from conflict and drama, away from persecution, away from any accusation, away from worries; he has nothing to take care of, love is taking care of him, love as he's always wanted it and never had it: love-repose; love-oblivion; love-desertion; love-carefreeness; love-meaningless. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

5 " The situation is very slightly solemn and thus embarrassing, as are all such situations when after the initial lovemaking, the lovers confront a future they are suddenly required to take on. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

6 " If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred? "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

7 " Everyone is wrong about the future. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

8 " He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

9 " I imagine the feelings of two people meeting after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't, have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

10 " I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people. Except for a few years after Martin died. Those were the toughest years, I was alone with my children, I had to cope by myself. Complete poverty. You won't believe this, but nowadays when I look back, those are my happiest years. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

11 " In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

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

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

13 " 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. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

14 " It was the incommunicable scent of this country, its intangible essence, that she had brought along with her to France. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

15 " [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 unknown; not because it was big but because it was small and in constant danger. Their patriotism was an enormous compassion for their country. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

16 " Eventually we come to know and understand a lot of things, but it's too late, because a whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn't know a thing. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

17 " The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

18 " To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in. "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

19 " Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred? "

― Milan Kundera , Ignorance

20 " 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 , Ignorance