Quotes by Czech Authors - Page 8

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.This is the obscenity of war: the intimacy of mutually shed blood, the lascivious proximity of two soldiers who, eye to eye, bayonet each other.
Milan Kundera
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
I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.
Franz Kafka
Explore the world with an open mind, a sturdy carry-on, and clothes that don't wrinkle!
Madeleine K. Albright
Fighting to protect the people you cared for was one thing. Trusting someone you loved to fight for themselves took a different kind of strength and bravery.
Martina Boone
Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be transformed into a cave, in which, no doubt, he would be free to crawl about unimpeded in all directions, but only at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past at the same time?
Franz Kafka
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Václav Havel
Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood 'information.' What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being.
Vilém Flusser
Is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about? ... Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.
Milan Kundera
You're asking me to look into the future and give you guarantees. Magic isn't a recipe for baking cake.
Martina Boone
I am a very unhappy human being and you, dearest, simply had to be summoned to create an equilibrium for all this misery.
Franz Kafka
The simplest description is that Unschooling means a way of bringing up children using free play and child-directed activity to develop the child's own individual talents and creativity by supportively following up the child's own interests – without coercion, compulsion, manipulation, regimentation, constant testing and grading and rank-ordering, or top-down authoritarianism.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
Love is a drama of contradictions.
Franz Kafka
Sometimes, though, we let ourselves get so used to being 'fine' that we lose track of how 'not fine' we are.
Martina Boone
Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
Milan Kundera
Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good...
Milan Kundera
If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.
Franz Kafka
The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
Franz Kafka
Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror and nothing but horror." Paul was pleased that man was gradually covering the whole earth with concrete. It was as if he were watching a cruel murderess being walled up.
Milan Kundera
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Franz Kafka
Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
Milan Kundera
An increasing number of people are taking advantage of having a leg up on their competition by branding themselves as "the expert" in their particular niche. Call it a business card, a resume, a billboard, or whatever you choose, but the long and short of it is that books are no longer just books. They are branding devices and credibility builders, not to mention door openers. Books are the reason that authors command large speaking and consulting fees.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
Milan Kundera
Those who are fascinated by the idea of progress do not suspect that everything moving forward is at the same time bringing the end nearer and that joyous watchwords like "forward" and "farther" are the lascivious voice of death urging us to hasten to it. (If fascination with the word "forward" has become universal, isn't it mainly because death is already speaking to us from nearby?)
Milan Kundera
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
Franz Kafka
Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.
Milan Kundera
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
Franz Kafka
The meaning of life is that it ends
Franz Kafka
What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure.
Milan Kundera
Those who had fought for what they called the revolution maintained a great pride: the pride of being on the correct side of the front lines. Ten or twelve years later (around the time of our story) the front lines began to melt away, and with them the correct side. No wonder the former supporters of the revolution feel cheated and are quick to seek substitute fronts; thanks to religion they can (in their role as atheists struggling against believers) stand again on the correct side and retain their habitual and precious sense of their own superiority.But to tell the truth, the substitute front was also useful to others, and it will perhaps not be too premature to disclose that Alice was one of them. Just as the directress wanted to be on the correct side, Alice wanted to be on the opposite side. During the revolution they had nationalized her papa's shop, and Alice hated those who had done this to him. But how should she show her hatred? Perhaps by taking a knife and avenging her father? But this sort of thing is not the custom in Bohemia. Alice had a better means for expressing her opposition: she began to believe in God.
Milan Kundera
Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.
Milan Kundera
She admired her passion, knowing that passion is by definition excessive.
Milan Kundera
Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate."Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man.
Milan Kundera
Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it.
Franz Kafka
Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.
Franz Kafka
[An example of misattribution:]If you don’t know the source of a quote,you can always make it sound better by attributing it to me.— Mark Twain
Jakub Marian
Revolution and youth are closely allied. What can a revolution promise to adults? To some it brings disgrace, to others favor. But even that favor is questionable, for it affects only the worse half of life, and in addition to advantages it also entails uncertainty, exhausting activity and upheaval of settled habits.Youth is substantially better off: it is not burdened by guilt, and the revolution can accept young people in toto. The uncertainty of revolutionary times is an advantage for youth, because it is the world of the fathers that is challenged. How exciting to enter into the age of maturity over the shattered ramparts of the adult world!
Milan Kundera
Writing is prayer.
Franz Kafka
In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know.If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.
Milan Kundera
The closest one person can get to another is through silence.
Bohumil Hrabal
Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers.
Franz Kafka
Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.
Jakub Marian
I had written the sentence, 'You mustn't think that the evolution that gave rise to us was the only evolutionary possibility on this planet. . . . that cultural developments could be shaped through the mediation of another animal species. If the biological conditions were favorable, some civilization not inferior to our own could arise in the depths of the sea. . . . Would it do the same stupid things mankind has done? Would it invite the same historical calamities? What would we say if some animal other than man declared that its education and its numbers gave it the sole right to occupy the entire world and hold sway over all creation?
Karel Čapek
[He] used to be soinsignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.
Franz Kafka
I only fear danger where I want to fear it.
Franz Kafka
Fortunately, I read (the books) without knowing what I was in for, and the best thing that can ever happen to a reader happened to me: I loved something that, by conviction (or by my nature) I should not have loved
Milan Kundera
Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
Milan Kundera
Realism is knowing fantasy and reality intersect constantly. Realism is living with the awareness that every act changes the world.
Ales Kot
Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it.
Milan Kundera
You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind-- for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive-- even the degree of self-revelation and surrender is not enough for writing.Writing that springs from the surface of existence-- when there is no other way and deeper wells have dried up-- is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes the surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.
Franz Kafka
If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond "Es Muss sein!
Milan Kundera
and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone. The body that had betrayed her and that she had sent out into the world among other bodies.
Milan Kundera
Love doesn't come with an on-off switch. It's made of too many threads of memory and hope and heartache that weave themselves into the very core of who you are.
Martina Boone
How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more
Milan Kundera
A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
Ivan Klíma
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
The final option to have your book completed is to hire a ghost writer. The challenge with this option is that it is important to note that your voice IS an integral part of your branding. When you hire someone else, what your readers will ultimately get is their voice. When they see you later at your website or on your social media, your voice will not be the same. This will trigger a feeling of inconsistency when relationships need to be built upon trust and authenticity. Your audience will eventually come to think you are not the “real deal” and will find another to replace you. Finally, your book is a springboard and launching pad to greater things such as speaking, interviews, a product line, etc. Will your ghost writer be available for all of that as well? How will you be able to “ghost write” your way through an interview? Hence the reason I stress speaking in your own voice. You may think you are not perfect, but your authenticity will speak in volumes to your followers and they will be customers for life if they see your true being.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you’re doing right back at you.
Martina Boone
Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.
Ernest Gellner
Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that conies of the certainty that there is no certainty.But humor, to recall Octavio Paz, is "the great invention of the modern spirit." It has not been with us forever, and it won't be with us forever either.With a heavy heart, I imagine the day when Panurge no longer makes people laugh.
Milan Kundera