"What makes people raise their fists in the air, puts rifles in their hands, drives them to join struggles for just and unjust causes, is not reason but a hypertrophied soul. It is the fuel without which the motor of history would stop turning and Europe would lie down in the grass and placidly watch clouds sail across the sky.

Christiane did not suffer from hypertrophy of the soul and did not yearn to exhibit herself on the great stage of history. I suspect that she preferred to lie on her back in the grass and watch the clouds float by. (I even suspect that she knew happiness at such times, something a person with a hypertrophied soul dislikes seeing, because he is burning in the fire of his self and is never happy.)"

Kundera, Immortality-217