A Quote by Milan Kundera

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Milan Kundera

Quote Topics

Accidents Background Become Criticism Forgotten Gestures Historical Isolated Soon Without Works

Quote Author

Milan Kundera
Czechoslovakian - Writer
Born: April 1, 1929

Today people live to work rather than work for a living. They have forgotten their true goal in life. Subsequently they have forgotten their dharma. There is no communication between hearts, there is no sharing. Having lost contact with other's hearts, we become totally isolated. But in truth we are not isolated islands, we are links that form one chain.

Mata Amritanandamayi

There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.

Octavio Paz

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.

Michael Morpurgo

This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative - or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody.

Rajneesh

I think the whole emphasis in England, in universities, on practical criticism (but not that so much as on historical criticism, knowing what period a line comes from) this is almost paralysing. In America, in University, we read - what? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, that is where we began. Shakespeare flaunted in the background. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I think that' for the young poet, the writing poet, it is not quite so frightening to go to university in America as it is in England, for these reasons.

Sylvia Plath

Illness isolates; the isolated become invisible; the invisible become forgotten. But the snail....the snail kept my spirit from evaporating.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey

For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.

Donnie Yen

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.

Brian Eno

Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.

Susan Vreeland

Gestures come first! Before we're consciously aware of our thoughts, we start to gesture. Pay attention to your gestures, and others', and you can become a more powerful communicator.

Nick Morgan

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

When people tell me they're trying to meditate, I always know they don't have a format yet that works. I encourage a real meditative format that you use daily, because meditation is incremental and it only works if done every day.

Deborah King

I really love to make sweeping historical gestures that are like little illustrations of novels.

Kara Walker

That was one of the big problems in the [Black Panther] Party. Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged, and the little that was given often wasn’t taken seriously. Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.