I’d say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it once was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land; my grandfather, the magician of beautiful tables; the shoemakers who knew every villager’s feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners; probably even the soldiers killed with passion back then. The meaning of life wasn’t an issue, it was there with them, quite naturally in their workshops, in their fields. Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think differently from a peasant, a soldier would behave differently from a teacher. Today we’re all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.
Milan Kundera
Related You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part. HENRY JAMES She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t... STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite STEPHEN CHBOSKY You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE. STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun... STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté. STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco... STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them. STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st... STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting. STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad. STEPHEN CHBOSKY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes... JEAN SASSON I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if... STEPHEN CHBOSKY You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ... C. JOYBELL C. I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. the room of the spirit is the mind and the seat of the spirit is the heart. What we give room to muc... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my fac... STEPHEN CHBOSKY The only perspective is to really be there. STEPHEN CHBOSKY I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know if I have a favorite color. KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl. KATE MIDDLETON I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib... C. JOYBELL C. Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out... ANNE FRANK Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I just want you to know that you’re very special… and the only reason I’m telling you is that ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I thought I would write a love letter. But then, I wrote a book." - Suzy Davies, on "Johari's Window SUZY DAVIES There is no greater glory than to die for love. GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nasti... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. S... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t... THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the w... STEPHEN KING Put my head under my pillow, and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be. STEPHEN CHBOSKY Always Be Ready For Anything that Comes: Bananas, Chips, College, an Opportunity, so when it does yo... DANIEL OJEDA You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl... TAMMARA WEBBER The meaning of life: For centuries "man" searched for the meaning of life. On that journey, the valu... DORIS J TORRES The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha... FRANCINE RIVERS Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different. JOHNNIE DENT JR. A great future starts with what you can see SOTONYE ANGA She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word. DIANA WYNNE JONES The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a... NEIL GAIMAN What is the Other?" they ask. The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ... PAULO COELHO The Dream of a Queer Fellow I write the words again and they appear doubly pregnant with meaning. It... JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY If you have read this far in the chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans - and I certainly hope you have... LEMONY SNICKET If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever. FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha... FRANCINE RIVERS Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer... J.R.R. TOLKIEN There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the c... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ He said it was the kind of book you made your own. STEPHEN CHBOSKY No hay nada como respirar hondo después de reírte tanto. Nada en el mundo como el dolor de estóma... STEPHEN CHBOSKY Sam dropped me off. When she was too far away to see me, I started to cry again. Because she was my ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained. QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and... QUEEN ELIZABETH II My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime. QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have to be seen to be believed. QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou... QUEEN ELIZABETH II I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast. QUEEN ELIZABETH II The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be. QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t... QUEEN ELIZABETH II To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th... QUEEN ELIZABETH II What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good... QUEEN ELIZABETH II I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e... QUEEN ELIZABETH II To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an... QUEEN ELIZABETH II Grief is the price we pay for love. QUEEN ELIZABETH II The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl... QUEEN ELIZABETH II At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr... QUEEN ELIZABETH II For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first. QUEEN ELIZABETH II The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w... QUEEN ELIZABETH II I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s... QUEEN ELIZABETH II Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g... QUEEN ELIZABETH II We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man... QUEEN ELIZABETH II Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as... QUEEN ELIZABETH II These wretched babies don't come until they are ready. QUEEN ELIZABETH II I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t... QUEEN ELIZABETH II In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ... QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters... QUEEN ELIZABETH II No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew... QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o... QUEEN ELIZABETH II From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life: “In a slum somewhere in India As... THE PROPHET OF LIFE His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha... TEKOA MANNING We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed... JOHN H. GROBERG The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ... C. JOYBELL C. In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH love, I've come to understand is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. NICHOLAS SPARKS Life is short, and that's why, I don't test people; because we all fail tests sometimes, but that is... C. JOYBELL C. If you want to feel the life and the body of great men who are long gone, go to their tombs or monum... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The heart is deceitful and wicked in everyone; the Holy Spirit changes even the most wretched sinner... NORM TOMLINSON The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrific... NORM TOMLINSON
More Milan Kundera
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual. MILAN KUNDERA Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists o... MILAN KUNDERA We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be w... MILAN KUNDERA A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the n... MILAN KUNDERA The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage... MILAN KUNDERA Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on ... MILAN KUNDERA The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused... MILAN KUNDERA Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different b... MILAN KUNDERA Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear... 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MILAN KUNDERA Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is ... MILAN KUNDERA It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothes... MILAN KUNDERA For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from t... MILAN KUNDERA For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the ... MILAN KUNDERA Horror is a shock, a time of utter blindness. Horror lacks every hint of beauty. All we can see is t... MILAN KUNDERA Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where... MILAN KUNDERA It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of... MILAN KUNDERA True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has... MILAN KUNDERA We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our em... MILAN KUNDERA Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end. MILAN KUNDERA I find myself fascinating. MILAN KUNDERA This is the image from which he was born...... Characters are not born, like people, of woman; they ... MILAN KUNDERA People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all. MILAN KUNDERA Having had occasion in the past to observe Communist statesmen, I saw with surprise that they were o... MILAN KUNDERA A man is responsible for his ignorance. MILAN KUNDERA Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength,"... MILAN KUNDERA Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all... MILAN KUNDERA The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows n... MILAN KUNDERA And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? MILAN KUNDERA loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away. MILAN KUNDERA There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We ... MILAN KUNDERA I want you to be weak. As weak as I am. MILAN KUNDERA The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records ever... MILAN KUNDERA A single metaphor can give birth to love. MILAN KUNDERA she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as... MILAN KUNDERA She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me t... MILAN KUNDERA The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed... MILAN KUNDERA [W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory. 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MILAN KUNDERA In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan e... MILAN KUNDERA Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person wh... MILAN KUNDERA تختفي الذكريات إذا لم تُستحضر مرة وأخرى في أحاديث الأص�... MILAN KUNDERA أتخيل انفعال كائنين يلتقيان بعد سنوات. قديما تعاشرا، ف�... MILAN KUNDERA Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it ... MILAN KUNDERA When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (the... MILAN KUNDERA We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who ... MILAN KUNDERA En griego, «regreso» se dice nostos. Algos significa “sufrimiento”. La nostalgia es, pues, el ... MILAN KUNDERA And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love... MILAN KUNDERA The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us... MILAN KUNDERA Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know ... MILAN KUNDERA To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't deat... MILAN KUNDERA The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment ... MILAN KUNDERA Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything ex... MILAN KUNDERA Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee. MILAN KUNDERA The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place ... MILAN KUNDERA But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave. MILAN KUNDERA Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and ... MILAN KUNDERA When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of he... MILAN KUNDERA Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional ... MILAN KUNDERA Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she... MILAN KUNDERA The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of f... MILAN KUNDERA In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone w... MILAN KUNDERA A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with clean underwear -instead of... MILAN KUNDERA I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me... MILAN KUNDERA Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll... MILAN KUNDERA I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one ... MILAN KUNDERA Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift. MILAN KUNDERA Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by t... MILAN KUNDERA Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists MILAN KUNDERA Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all. MILAN KUNDERA To laugh is to live profoundly. MILAN KUNDERA The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting MILAN KUNDERA The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty. ... MILAN KUNDERA