The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the non-existence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.

She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand. Embarrassed, she chan

‘Why don’t you ever use your strength on me?’ she said. ‘Because love means renouncing strength,’ said Franz softly. Sabina realized two things: first, that Franz’s words were noble and just; second, that they disqualified him from her love life.

From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenery.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

God expelled man from Paradise did He make him feel disgust. Man began to hide what shamed him, and by the time he removed the veil, he was blinded by a great light. Thus, immediately after his introduction to disgust, he was introduced to excitement. Without shit (in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word), there would be no sexual