Immortality Quotes

“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“I have a strong will to love you for eternity.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“A person is nothing but his image. Philosophers can tell us that it doesn't matter what the world thinks of us, that nothing matters but what we really are. But philosophers don't understand anything. As long as we live with other people, we are only what other people consider us to be. Thinking about how others see us and trying to make our image as attractive as possible is considered a kind of dissembling or cheating. But does there exist another kind of direct contact between my self and their selves except through the mediation of the eyes? Can we possibly imagine love without anxiously following our image in the mind of the beloved? When we are no longer interested in how we are seen by the person we love, it means we no longer love.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“أنا أفكر, إذن أنا موجود, ذلك قولُ مثقفٍ يُسيء تقدير قيمة ألم الإنسان. أنا أحس, إذن أنا موجود, تلك حقيقة لها قوة أكثر عمومية بكثير و تخص كل كــائن حي. لا تتميز أنـاي عن أناكم بالفكر بشكل أساسي. هنـاك بشر كثيرون و أفكار قليلة. إننا إذ ننقل أفكارنا أو نقتبسها أو يسرقها أحدنا من الآخر, نفكر جميعنا بالشيء نفسه تقريبا. أما حين يدوس شخص ما فوق قدمي, فأنا وحدي من يحس بالألم. ليس الفكر هو أساس الأنا, بل الألم, أكثر الأحاسيس أولويةً.
في الألم لا يمكن للقطة أن تشك بأناها الفريدة و غير القابلة للتبديل. عندما يصبح الألم حادا, يتلاشى العالمُ و يبقى كل منّا وحيداً مع نفسه. الألم هــو المدرسة الكبرى للأنانية”
― ميلان كونديرا, Immortality

“Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“إما أن تصبح المرأة مستقبل الرجل أو ينتهي أمر الانسانية لأن المرأة وحده تستطيع ان تحتفظ في داخلها بامل لا يبرره شيء , وتدعونا الى مستقبل مشكوك فيه كنا سنكف عن الايمان به منذ زمن طويل بدون نساء . بقيت طوال حياتي مستعدا لتتبع صوتهن حتى لو كان صوتا مجنونا , في حين أني قد أكون أي شيء إلا مجنونا . لا يوجد ما هو أجمل من الانقياد نحو المجهول لصوتٍ مجنون لمن ليس مجنونا. عندها ردد بفخامة الكلمات الالمانية " تقودنا الأنثى الخالدة نحو الأعلى ”
― ميلان كونديرا, Immortality

“She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than the sight of a woman violated by her own body!”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of ego-centrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“يفقد العالم شفافيته شيئاً فشيئاً، يصبح كتيماً وعصياً على الفهم، يهوى في المجهول، بينما يهرب الإنسان الذي خانه العالم، إلى داخل نفسه، إلى حنينه، إلى أحلامه، إلى ثورته، فلا يعود بإمكانه سماع الأصوات التي تسائله من الخارج بعد أن أصَمَّهُ الصوتُ الأليم الذي يرتفع في داخله”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“إنه لتوفيق هائل أن الحروب خاضها الرجال . لو أن النساء خضن الحروب , فسوف يكن مبدئيات في قسوتهن بحيث لا يبقى أي كائن إنساني على الكوكب .”
― ميلان كونديرا, Immortality

“جميعنا في جزء ما من أنفسنا نعيش وراء الزمن, ربما أننا لا نَعي عمرَنا إلا في لحظات استثنائية, وأننا معظم الوقت أشخاص بلا أعمار”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“اسمُ عائلتنا أيضا, هو يُقسَم لنا بالمصادفة, دون أن نعرف متى ظهر في العالم, ولا كيف التَقَطَهُ أحد الأجداد المجهولين. إننا لانفهم هذا الاسمَ مطلقاً, ولا نعرف شيئاً عن تاريخه, ومع ذلك نحمله بإخلاص مُمَجّد, نتوحّد به ويروق لنا جداً, ونفخر به بشكل يدعو للسخرية كما لو أننا نحن الذين ابتدعناه تحت تأثير إلهام عبقري”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons; he does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme; he will come to realise it only when his life begins to enact its first variations.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“تخيل أنك عشت في عالم ليس فيه مرايا. كنت ستحلم بوجهك، كنت ستتخيله كنوع من الانعكاس الخارجي لما هو داخلك. بعد ذلك، افرض أنهم وضعوا أمامك مرآة وأنت في الأربعين من عمرك. تخيل جزعك. كنت سترى وجهاً غريباً تماماً. وكنت ستفهم بصورة جلية ما ترفض الإقرار به: وجهك ليس أنتَ”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“And it isn't enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality