Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
Interpretation
Mysticism and exaggeration are interconnected, and one must not fear judgment to explore profound experiences.
In this quote, Milan Kundera suggests that mysticism, which often involves deep spiritual insights or experiences, is frequently misunderstood and subject to ridicule. He emphasizes the importance of embracing these intense experiences, whether they lead to humility or joy, without being deterred by the judgment of others. This exploration is vital for personal growth and understanding oneβs place in the world.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech encouraging people to pursue their passions despite external judgment.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
It is too bad that the public expects from me, always, perfection which it is impossible for me always to attain. I am not a machine. I am a human being.
In Kabbalah, as in the Hassidic tradition, you cure the body, but you fix the soul. Curing takes time, but fixing, if you know how to do it, is immediate.
Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the whiteβs front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.
Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.
How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species.
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