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For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

— Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

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Kindness

More quotes by Milan Kundera

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

Testaments Betrayed (1995)

Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

The Joke (1967)

In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

All Milan Kundera quotes →

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A daughter who respects you while you’re alive is far better than a son who performs the rites and rituals after you’re gone.

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O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.

Ambrose Bierce

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Milan Kundera (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.