Life & Wisdom Quote by Milan Kundera

Kundera needles a stubborn prejudice in modern taste: that seriousness must be measured, reasonable, properly proportioned. Mysticism, he argues, isn’t a soft-focus alternative to thought; it’s an art of intensity. And intensity, by its nature, looks like exaggeration to anyone standing at a safe distance. The line is a defense of going too far on purpose, not because the mystic is confused, but because the experience being described exceeds ordinary language and ordinary social norms.

“Must not fear ridicule” is the hinge. Kundera knows the contemporary tribunal: irony, sophistication, the quick laugh that punishes anyone who risks sounding earnest or grand. Mysticism becomes a dare to outlast that laughter. The mystic’s job isn’t to be liked; it’s to follow an interior logic beyond the approved register of taste. That’s why he pairs the “limits of humility” with the “limits of delight.” The subtext is that both extremes scandalize the sensible middle. Radical humility can look like self-abasement; radical delight can look like kitsch or mania. Ridicule is what society uses to keep those extremes from becoming contagious.

Context matters: Kundera spent his life dissecting how ideology colonizes private feeling, how a culture polices the imagination with slogans and tasteful skepticism. Here he’s staking out a contrarian freedom: the right to speak in overstatement when the truth you’re chasing is disproportionate. Exaggeration isn’t decoration; it’s the only instrument big enough to register what mysticism claims to touch.