Slowness Quotes

“Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.

Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“الحب بالتعريف هو هدية غير مشروطة، أن تكون محبوباً بدون اشتراط لهو البرهان على الحب الحقيقي. لو أخبرتني امرأة: أنا أحبك لأنك ذكي، لأنك لائق، لأنك تبتاع لي الهدايا، لأنك لا تلاحق النساء، لأنك تغسل الأطباق.. حينها سأكون في خيبة أمل، فهكذا حب - في الواقع - هو مشروع مصلحة ذاتية. كم هو أكثر دقة أن نسمع: أنا مجنونة بك ولو لم تكن ذكياً أو لائقاً، حتى ولو كنت كاذباً أو مغروراً أو مجرد لقيط!”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition reduced to an obstacle to be got past as quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion, the only true goal of love-making and of the universe.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man. As opposed to a motorcyclist, the runner is always present in his body, forever required to think about his blisters, his exhaustion; when he runs he feels his weight, his age, more conscious than ever of himself and of his time of life. This all changes when man delegates the faculty of speed to a machine: from then on, his own body is outside the process, and he gives over to a speed that is noncorporeal, nonmaterial, pure speed, speed itself, ecstasy speed.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“تتناسب درجة البطء طردًا مع قوّة الذاكرة، وتتناسب درجة السرعة طردًا مع قوّة النسيان.”
― ميلان كونديرا, Slowness

“I beg you friend, be happy. I have the vague sense that on your capacity to be happy hangs our only hope.”
― Milan Kundera , Slowness

“What could I say? Maybe this: the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time; he is outside time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“في المستقبل يكمن مصدر الخوف ، ومن تحرر من المستقبل لا يبقى لديه ما يخشاه”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“When I described Madame de T's night, I recalled the well-known equation from one of the first chapters of the textbook of existential mathematics: the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting. From that equation we can deduce various corrollaries, for instance this one: our period is given over to the demon of speed, and that is the reason it so easily forgets its own self. Now I would reverse that statement and say: our period is obsessed by the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered; that it is tired of itself; sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars?”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“A scarf from her dress works free and floats behind her the way memories float behind the dead.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“تزداد جولي حزناً. و بالنسبة للرجل ، لا يوجد بلسم للألم أفضل من الحزن الذي يسببه لامرأة.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Is goodwill so fragile, so precarious a thing, then? (Of course, dear fellow, of course)”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Le sentiment d'être élu est présent, par exemple, dans toute relation amoureuse. car l'amour, par définition, est un cadeau non mérité ; être aimé sans mérite, c'est même la preuve d'un vrai amour. Si une femme me dit : je t'aime parce que tu es intelligent, parce que tu es honnête, parce que tu m'achètes des cadeaux, parce que tu ne dragues pas, parce que tu fais la vaiselle, je suis déçu ; cet amour a l'air de quelque chose d'intéressé. Combien il est plus beau d'entendre : je suis folle de toi bien que tu ne sois ni intelligent ni honnête, bien que tu sois menteur, égoïste, salaud. (chapitre 15)”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? Have they vanished along with footpaths, with grasslands and clearings, with nature? There is a Czech proverb that describes their easy indolence by a metaphor: “They are gazing at God’s windows.” A person gazing at God’s windows is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for the activity he lacks.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“... in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Tous les hommes politiques d'aujourd'hui, selon Pontevin, sont un peu danseurs, et tous les danseurs se mêlent de politique, ce qui, toutefois, ne devrait pas nous amener à les confondre. Le danseur se distingue de l'homme politique ordinaire en ceci qu'il ne désire pas le pouvoir mais la gloire ; il ne désire pas imposer au monde telle ou telle organisation sociale (il s'en soucie comme d'une guigne) mais occuper la scène pour faire rayonner son moi.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“الألم هو المفهوم الجوهري لمذهب المتعة”
― ميلان كونديرا, Slowness

“Cada possibilidade nova que tem a existência, até a menos provável, transforma a existência inteira.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“هناك حالة يكون فيها الصوت الأشد ضعفاً مسموعاً وذلك عندما ينطق بأفكار تزعجنا.”
― ميلان كونديرا, Slowness

“Être élu est une notion théologique qui veut dire : sans aucun mérite, par un verdict surnaturel, par une volonté libre, sinon capricieuse, de Dieu, on est choisi pour quelque chose d'exceptionnel et d'extraordinaire. C'est dans cette conviction que les saints ont puisé la force de supporter les plus atroces supplices. Les notions théologiques se reflètent, telle leur propre parodie, dans la trivialité de nos vies ; chacun de nous souffre (plus ou moins) de la bassesse de sa vie trop ordinaire et désire y échapper et s'élever. Chacun de nous a connu l'illusion (plus ou moins forte) d'être digne de cette élévation, d'être prédestiné et choisi pour elle. (chapitre 15)”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Change the world! In Pontevin's view, what a monstrous goal! Not because the world is so admirable as it is but because any change leads inevitably to something worse.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“The way contemporary history is told is like a huge concert where they present all of Beethoven’s one hundred thirty-eight opuses one after the other, but actually play just the first eight bars of each.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“El amor, por definición, es un regalo no merecido; ser amado sin mérito es incluso la prueba de un amor verdadero.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Celui qui éprouve de l'aversion pour les danseurs et veut les dénigrer se heurtera toujours à un obstacle infranchissable : leur honnêteté ; car en s'exposant constamment au public, le danseur se condamne à être irréprochable ; il n'a pas conclu comme Faust un contrat avec le Diable, il l'a conclu avec l'Ange : il veut faire de sa vie une oeuvre d'art et c'est dans ce travail que l'Ange l'aide ; car, n'oublie pas, la danse est un art ! C'est dans cette obsession de voir en sa propre vie la matière d'une oeuvre d'art que se trouve la vraie essence du danseur ; il ne prêche pas la morale, il la danse ! Il veut émouvoir et éblouir le monde par la beauté de sa vie ! il est amoureux de sa vie comme un sculpteur peut être amoureux de la statue qu'il est en train de modeler." (chapitre 6)”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness