"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
— Henry David Thoreau

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity"
— Henry David Thoreau

"I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."
— Henry David Thoreau

"...if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?"
— Henry David Thoreau

"A man can suffocate on courtesy."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
— Henry David Thoreau

"The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men."
— Henry David Thoreau

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it."
— Henry David Thoreau

"It is never too late to give up your prejudices"
— Henry David Thoreau

"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend."
— Henry David Thoreau

"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust."
— Henry David Thoreau

"We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth."
— Henry David Thoreau

"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."
— Milan Kundera

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."
— Milan Kundera

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. 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."
— Milan Kundera

"There is no perfection only life"
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal."
— Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

"The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure."
— Milan Kundera

"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."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."
— Milan Kundera

"We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it."
— Milan Kundera

"To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"The young man locked the door and turned to the girl. She was standing facing him in a defiant pose with insolent sensuality in her eyes. He looked at her and tried to discover behind her lascivious expression the familiar features that he loved tenderly. It was as if he were looking at two images through the same lens, at two images superimposed one on the other with one showing through the other. These two images showing through each other were telling him that everything was in the girl, that her soul was terrifyingly amorphous, that it held faithfulness and unfaithfulness, treachery and innocence, flirtatiousness and chastity. This disorderly jumble seemed disgusting to him, like the variety to be found in a pile of garbage. Both images continued to show through each other, and the young man understood that the girl differed only on the surface from other women, but deep down was the same as they: full of all possible thoughts, feelings, and vices, which justified all his secret misgivings and fits of jealousy. The impression that certain outlines delineated her as an individual was only a delusion to which the other person, the one who was looking, was subject--namely himself. It seemed to him that the girl he loved was a creation of his desire, his thoughts, and his faith and that the real girl now standing in front of him was hopelessly other, hopelessly alien, hopelessly polymorphous. He hated her."
— Milan Kundera (Laughable Loves)

"But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)