Lightness Quotes

“We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.”
― Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance

“…how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us.
And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of one only word, goodbye. This, really, would be wonderful. It would be sweet, life, every life. And things wouldn’t hurt, but they would get near taken by stream, one could first shave and then touch them and only finally be touched. Be wounded, also. Die because of them. Doesn’t matter. But everything would be, finally, human. It would be enough someone’s fancy -a father, a lover, someone- could invent a way, here in the middle of the silence, in this land which don’t wanna talk. Clement way, and beautiful.
A way from here to the sea.”
― Alessandro Baricco, Ocean Sea

“Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.”
― Milan Kundera

“History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I stood there feeling the lightness of my bones, knowing now this was not only lack of sleep that had transformed my bones into feathers, but my body's recognition that soon I would be leaving this place I had inhabited for one year, this place made entirely of grief.”
― Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

“How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there's no need to let anyone make it heavy for us”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“Fanno delle cose, le donne, alle volte, che c'è da rimanerci secchi. Potresti passare una vita a provarci: ma non saresti capace di avere quella leggerezza che hanno loro, alle volte. Sono leggere dentro. Dentro.”
― Alessandro Baricco

“My dad showed me that it's my responsibility to provide my own joy, and that every moment is a chance to find lightness.”
― Whitney Cummings, I'm Fine...and Other Lies

“She had what the Councillor knew, in the technical language of the ballet, as "ballon", a lightness that is not only the negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers - as if the matter itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it the better it works.”
― Karen Blixen, Seven Gothic Tales

“Suddenly, I’m lighter, only half of who I was.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“I believe that with all things in life, there is a constant need to let go of the idea of "trying hard", there's a heaviness in trying hard to get something, have something or be something. As long as people comply with the idea of "trying hard" they will constantly remain in a place of heaviness. The opposite of this is the state of allowing, of setting out the intentions of what you wish, putting in the required action and not self-sabotaging yourself by "trying hard" or expecting results to unfold in a particular way. Anything that's worth something to you in life such as love, abundance, freedom, peace is in a continuous state of flow. A state of lightness is the only way to allow yourself to go with the flow of things. Heaviness only makes you become a rocky solid object at the bottom of the stream. You can see the flow of things in the life of others who embody the lightness, but you yourself become unmovable in your state of heaviness, as if blocking the flow from reaching you. Will you let yourself move with the flow of abundance or sink at the bottom with the heaviness of your scarcity mindset?”
― Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

“Bands of Apollonian lightness and Dionysian darkness fill my inscrutable chamber. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, and ecstasy. Manchurian opposites of good and evil tug at me. My lifelong state of confusion manufactured a gray fog that engulfs me. Multilayers of misgiving line my impenetrable soul. Secret tunnels, coagulation’s of light and dense waves of incomprehensible silence, wend through me. I am constantly surprised to see slivers of myself. At times, I am utterly devoid of ambition. At other times, radical surges of energy convulse within me. Guilt, pleasure, anger, joy, impulsivity, watchfulness, sensual longings, and exhibitionist tendencies tumble within.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Love without restraint makes one saint and the other faint; the sweetest face and the tenderest embrace bring the sun to every place in such grace.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Tao of Physical and Spiritual

“My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.”
― Italo Calvino

“Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe is a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind's fateful inexperience, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Can proximity cause vertigo?

It can. When the north pole comes so close as to touch the south pole, the earth disappears and man finds himself in a void that makes his head spin and beckons him to fall.

If rejection and privilege are one and the same, if there is no difference between the sublime and the paltry, if the Son of God can undergo judgment for shit, then human existence loses its dimensions and becomes unbearably light. When Stalin's son ran up to the electrified wire and hurled his body at it, the fence was like the pan of a scales sticking pitifully up in the air, lifted by the infinite lightness of a world that has lost its dimensions.

Stalin's son laid down his life for shit. But a death for shit is not a senseless death. The Germans who sacrificed their lives to expand their country's territory to the east, the Russians who died to extend their country's power to the west—yes, they died for something idiotic, and their deaths have no meaning or general validity. Amid the general idiocy of the war, the death of Stalin's son stands out as the sole metaphysical death.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“La luce rossastra del tramonto illumina ogni cosa con il fascino della nostalgia: anche la ghigliottina”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I guess all the time I spend on social media has made me believe that love exists above the surface, that it’s supposed to be light all of the time.”
― Shannon M Mullen

“From the depths of silence
The feeling rushes up
A warrior of brightness
Emerging from the dark

With words of pure abandonment,
A lust for emptiness, through art
Of pure suffering and torment
That sparks a beating heart

A spark of light in darkness,
And darkness be his light,
When all is lost in numbness
Sit still, no need to fight.”
― Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

“Though sun and moon are far away from you they don't hesitate to spread the light, although, the people are close to you they are hesitant to spread the light”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Dance with the clouds.”
― Adrienne Posey

“Lighten up. Brighten up. Smile.”
― Adrienne Posey

“There would not be worth for lightness without darkness.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“The traditional purpose of darkness in the fantastic is to disturb, to unsettle, to cause unrest. This primal fear of darkness and Dark Others is so deeply rooted in Western myth that it is nearly impossible to find its origin... No matter what the reasons were for the way our culture came to view all things dark in the past, the consequences have been a nameless and lingering fear of dark people in the present.”
― Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games

“You'll know that you're aligned with the truth of your deepest wisdom when your body feels light and expansive. You'll know when something isn't right for you because you'll feel constricted, awkward, fidgety, tense, or edgy.”
― Kris Franken, The Call of Intuition: How to Recognize & Honor Your Intuition, Instinct & Insight

“Learn to appreciate the caterpillar and the whole process of metamorphosis! The beauty and lightness of the butterfly only exist after going through these phases.”
― Karina Fonseca Azevedo

“Father / Today I speak to you / in a language / akin to lightness.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“Father / Today I speak to you / in a language / akin to lightness...”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“I wouldn’t mind giving everything
to the light right now, after this
dark, dark season. I’m in need
of excess, gluttony, pleasure
that implodes into suffering.”
― A. Prevett

“The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.

Today's life is too hard, too bitter, too anemic, for us to
undergo new bondages, from whom we love (...]. This is how I am your friend, I love your happiness, your freedom, Your adventure in one word, and I would like to be for you the companion we are sure of, always.”
― Albert Camus, Correspondance