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.
By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to...
Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.
Back at home, after some prodding from Tereza, he admitted that he had been jealous watching her dance with a colleague of his. "You mean you were really jealous?" she asked him ten times or more, incredulously, as though someone had just informed he...
Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbeara...
When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can’t go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they’re covered with soil or stones?
le but que l'on poursuit est toujours voilé. Une jeune fille qui a envie de se marier a envie d'une chose qui lui est tout à fait inconnue. Le jeune homme qui court après la gloire n'a aucune idée de ce qu'est la gloire. Ce qui donne un sens à n...
No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development.
Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.
Dreaming is not only an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind’s deepes...
vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect.
It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (...) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman.
whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. (...) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, "My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer!" Isn't his "...
In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted
What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure.
L'homme ne peut jamais savoir ce qu'il faut vouloir car il n'a qu'une vie et il ne peut ni la comparer à des vies antérieures ni la rectifier dans des vies ultérieures. (...) Il n'existe aucun moyen de vérifier quelle décision est la bonne car i...
