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The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how [to] free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times [I'd] rather be torn to pieces than rather it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me. -- Franz Kafka
When I say something, this thing immediately and definitively loses its importance. When I write it down, it also loses it, but sometimes gains another importance. -- Franz Kafka
The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write. -- Franz Kafka
The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road. -- Franz Kafka
We were expelled from Paradise, but it was not destroyed. The expulsion from Paradise was in one sense a piece of good fortune, for if we had not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed. -- Franz Kafka
And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you're desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there's the least resistance, you lash yourself. -- Franz Kafka
Yours
(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours) -- Franz Kafka
The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one. -- Franz Kafka
It seemed remarkable to Gregor that above all the various noises of eating their chewing teeth could still be heard, as if they had wanted to show Gregor that you need teeth in order to eat and it was not possible to perform anything with jaws that are toothless however nice they might be. -- Franz Kafka
Sometimes I'm overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching. -- Franz Kafka
You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love. -- Franz Kafka
No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth. -- Franz Kafka
All [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters -- Franz Kafka
Whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; that is, he belongs to the Law and as such is set beyond human judgment. -- Franz Kafka
In Kafka's story "Wedding Preparations in the Country," Edward Raban fantasizes about splitting into two forms: one, to remain in bed all day, dreaming; the other, to go forth and conduct the business of the world. -- Franz Kafka
It is to us artisans and tradesmen that the salvation of the fatherland is entrusted; but we are not equal to such a task; never, indeed, have we claimed that we were capable of performing it. It is a misunderstanding; and it is proving our ruin. -- Franz Kafka
In her opinion her singing falls on deaf ears anyway; there is no lack of enthusiasm and applause, but she has long since given up hope of genuine understanding as she conceives it. -- Franz Kafka
One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it. -- Franz Kafka
My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast. -- Franz Kafka
It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man. -- Franz Kafka
To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard. -- Franz Kafka
In one and the same human being there are cognitions that, however utterly dissimilar they are, yet have one and the same object,so that one can only conclude that there are different subjects in one and the same human being. -- Franz Kafka
Then birds flew up like a shower of sparks, I followed them with my eyes and saw how they rose in a single breath, until they seemed no longer to be rising but I to be falling ... -- Franz Kafka
Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more. -- Franz Kafka
I'm tired, can't think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity. -- Franz Kafka
Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects. -- Franz Kafka
Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens. -- Franz Kafka
You too have weapons. -- Franz Kafka
There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us. -- Franz Kafka
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid. -- Franz Kafka
You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided. -- Franz Kafka
What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense. -- Franz Kafka
Now, her bedside table had been pulled into the middle of the room to be used as a desk for these proceedings, and the supervisor sat behind it. -- Franz Kafka
We come to mistake the crumbs of mercy for the feast of love -- Franz Kafka
For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance. -- Franz Kafka
I am a very unhappy human being and you, dearest, simply had to be summoned to create an equilibrium for all this misery. -- Franz Kafka
There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves. -- Franz Kafka
Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres. -- Franz Kafka
Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it. -- Franz Kafka
I have discovered your great wound. You are dying from this flower blooming on your side. -- Franz Kafka
We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us. -- Franz Kafka
One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay. -- Franz Kafka
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. -- Franz Kafka
It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here. -- Franz Kafka
Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace. -- Franz Kafka
And there shouldn't be anything to stop you carrying on with your usual life. -- Franz Kafka
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. -- Franz Kafka
Now, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call out for help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to suppress a smile at this idea. -- Franz Kafka
I ought to be able to invent words capable of blowing the odor of corpses in a direction other than straight into mine and the reader's face. -- Franz Kafka
The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one. -- Franz Kafka
We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us. -- Franz Kafka
It is strange how little sharpsightedness women possess; they only notice whether they please, then whether they arouse pity, and finally, whether you look for compassion from them. That is all; come to think of it, it may even be enough, generally speaking. -- Franz Kafka
My life was sweeter than other people's and my death will be more terrible by the same degree. -- Franz Kafka
He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone. -- Franz Kafka
You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don't know. -- Franz Kafka
This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer. -- Franz Kafka
Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before. -- Franz Kafka
The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not. -- Franz Kafka
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? -- Franz Kafka
August 2, 1914: Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon. -- Franz Kafka
They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus -- Franz Kafka
Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light. -- Franz Kafka
Don't concern yourself about anybody. Just do what you think is right. -- Franz Kafka
His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked. -- Franz Kafka
And don't demand any sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it from me more than I myself and yet many things elude me, I'm sure, perhaps everything eludes me. -- Franz Kafka
People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,
with dim, small lights.
Clouds which move across gray skies
past churches
with towers darkened in the dusk.
One who leans against granite railing
gazing into the evening waters,
His hands resting on old stones. -- Franz Kafka
Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god. -- Franz Kafka
You need not even listen, just wait ... the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself. -- Franz Kafka
Most men are not wicked. Men become bad and guilty because they speak and act without foreseeing the results of their words and their deeds. They are sleepwalkers, not evildoers. -- Franz Kafka
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. -- Franz Kafka
The door could not be heard closing; they must have left it open as is usual in houses visited by great misfortune. -- Franz Kafka
I, however, cannot force myself to use "meat drugs" to cheat on my loneliness. -- Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication
it makes them sociable.
I, however, cannot force myself to
use drugs to cheat on my loneliness
it is all that I have
and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well. -- Franz Kafka
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. -- Franz Kafka
This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me. -- Franz Kafka
K.'s uncle, who had already been made very angry by the long wait, turned abruptly round and retorted, "Ill? You say he's ill?" and strode towards the gentleman in a way that seemed almost threatening, as if he were the illness himself. -- Franz Kafka
I'm not in the right place - alas, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I'm not in the right place. -- Franz Kafka
Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour. -- Franz Kafka
Every one of us has a bad conscience, which he tries to escape by going to sleep as quickly as possible. -- Franz Kafka
The sister played so beautifully. Her face was tilted to one side and she followed the notes with soulful and probing eyes. Gregor advanced a little, keeping his eyes low so that they might possibly meet hers. Was he a beast if music could move him so? -- Franz Kafka
But the condemned man looked so submissively doglike that it seemed as if he might have been allowed to run free on the slopes and would only need to be whistled for when the execution was due to begin. -- Franz Kafka
Writing is prayer. -- Franz Kafka
A false ring of the night bell, once answered - it can never be made right. -- Franz Kafka
He looked sadly down at the street, as though it were his own bottomless sadness. -- Franz Kafka
There is a place where I never was before: here breathing is different, and more dazzling than the sun is the radiance of a star beside it. -- Franz Kafka
Kafka saw his tuberculosis as a liberation; interestingly, he called it "the animal. -- Franz Kafka
Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat and whispers in my ear, Doctor, let me die. -- Franz Kafka
Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it. -- Franz Kafka
Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world. -- Franz Kafka
Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session. -- Franz Kafka
For a man under suspicion movement is better than rest, for the man who is at rest can always, without knowing it, be on the scales being weighed together with his sins. -- Franz Kafka
No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world. -- Franz Kafka
Kafka regarded the end of "The Metamorphosis"- its composition in interrupted by a business trip- as "unreadable." He also wrote in his diary that he found it"bad," but of course Kafka relished his failure. Failure is precisely what he expected and resolved to accomplish- and he hid behind it. -- Franz Kafka
Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all. -- Franz Kafka
The Diabolical sometimes assumes the aspect of the Good, or even embodies itself completely in its form. If this remains concealedfrom me, I am of course defeated, for this Good is more tempting than the genuine Good. -- Franz Kafka
Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results. -- Franz Kafka
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka -- Franz Kafka
A loyal and loving son, Gregor feels obligated to pay off his parents' debt. Simply quitting would betray that loyalty. -- Franz Kafka
Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists. -- Franz Kafka
Franz's domineering father expected his son to take up a profitable business career that would ensure social advancement for the family, as well as a successful marriage promising the same. -- Franz Kafka
I am not at peace with myself; I am not always "something," and if for once I am "something," I pay for it by "being nothing" for months on end. -- Franz Kafka
[He] used to be so insignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence. -- Franz Kafka
It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law. -- Franz Kafka
A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief." -- Franz Kafka
There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution. -- Franz Kafka
All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One. -- Franz Kafka
I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. -- Franz Kafka
Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so. -- Franz Kafka
It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you. -- Franz Kafka
So eager are our people to obliterate the present. -- Franz Kafka
Death confronts us not unlike the historical battle scene that hangs on the wall of the classroom. It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world. -- Franz Kafka
A piece like a segment has been cut out of the back of his head. The sun looks in and the whole world with it. It makes him nervous, it distracts him from his work, and moreover it irritates him that he should be the very one excluded from the spectacle. -- Franz Kafka
The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil. -- Franz Kafka
I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason. -- Franz Kafka
German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting. -- Franz Kafka
He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it. -- Franz Kafka
Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form. -- Franz Kafka
Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement. -- Franz Kafka
Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being. -- Franz Kafka
You, who can't do anything, think you can bring off something like that? How can you even dare to think about it? If you were capable of it, you certainly wouldn't be in need of it. -- Franz Kafka
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. -- Franz Kafka
I write to close my eyes. -- Franz Kafka
How badly I even read. And with what malice and weakness I observe myself. Apparently I cannot force my way into the world, but lie quietly, receive, spread out within me what I have received, and then step calmly forth. -- Franz Kafka
And it really was kind of the moon to shine on me, too, and out of modesty I was about to place myself under the arch of the tower bridge when it occurred to me that the moon, of course, shone on everything. So I happily spread out my arms in order fully to enjoy the moon. -- Franz Kafka
Please - consider me a dream. -- Franz Kafka
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it. -- Franz Kafka
I lack nothing. I only needed myself. -- Franz Kafka
In a light that is fierce and strong one can see the world dissolve. To weak eyes it becomes solid, to weaker eyes it shows fists; before weaker eyes still it feels ashamed, and smites down whomsoever dares to look at it. -- Franz Kafka
The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us. -- Franz Kafka
You belong to me, even if I should never see you again. -- Franz Kafka
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue. -- Franz Kafka
By your side I'm most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free. -- Franz Kafka
Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue. -- Franz Kafka
She is so distinct to me, it's as though I had run my hands all over her. -- Franz Kafka
But then - I was just following him in reverie over mountain and valley - he jumped with both feet onto the middle of my body. I shuddered with wild pain, utterly uncomprehending. Who was it? A child? A gymnast? A daredevil? A suicide? A tempter? An annihilator? -- Franz Kafka
Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs. -- Franz Kafka
I am free and that's why I am lost -- Franz Kafka
16 February. Can't see my way clear. As though everything I possessed had escaped me, and as though it would hardly satisfy me if it all returned. -- Franz Kafka
How many days have again gone silently by; today is 28 May. Have I not even the resolution to take this penholder, this piece of wood, in my hand every day? I really think I do not. I row, ride, swim, lie in the sun. -- Franz Kafka
He has only as much ground as his two feet take up, only as much of a hold as his two hands encompass - someone who falls asleep in the winter snow to freeze to death like a child, someone who does nothing but takes walks, yet who could take them anywhere, without moving. -- Franz Kafka
For now he must lie low and try, through patience and the greatest consideration, to help his family bear the inconvenience he was bound to cause them in his present condition. -- Franz Kafka
If anything, his parables guarantee the failure not only of his characters, but of readers wishing to abstract any lessons applicable to their own lives. Failure, it seems, is Kafka's true subject. -- Franz Kafka
The longer one hesitates before the door, the more estranged one becomes. -- Franz Kafka
This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength which I gain through this writing thus spends itself, a strength which I certainly have not intended for this purpose. -- Franz Kafka
Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. -- Franz Kafka
There is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak -- Franz Kafka
Above all, he could not stop half way, that was nonsense not only in business but always and everywhere. -- Franz Kafka
Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency. -- Franz Kafka
Uncertainty, aridity, peace-all things will resolve themselves into these and pass away. -- Franz Kafka
If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o'clock. -- Franz Kafka
Karl, oh my Karl!' she cried, as if by gazing at him she were confirming her possession, while Karl saw absolutely nothing and felt uncomfortable in the warm bedding that she seemed to have piled up specially for his benefit. -- Franz Kafka
Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way. -- Franz Kafka
The poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man -- Franz Kafka
Kafkaesque
The term's meaning has transcended the literary realm to apply to real-life occurrences and situations that are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical. -- Franz Kafka
Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. -- Franz Kafka
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog. -- Franz Kafka
But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end? -- Franz Kafka
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug ... -- Franz Kafka
I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. -- Franz Kafka
For a time I let my mouth hang open, so that my excitement might take opportunity and leave. -- Franz Kafka
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world. -- Franz Kafka
Nobody reaches through here, least of all with a message from one who is dead. You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes. -- Franz Kafka
Without any way out, not even toward the depth. -- Franz Kafka
When one has lived for thirty years in this world and had to fight one's way through it, as I have had to do, one becomes hardened to surprises and doesn't take them too seriously. -- Franz Kafka
And yet the fear! -- Franz Kafka
Asking questions were the most important thing. -- Franz Kafka
His last words to Robert Klopstock are 'Kill me, or you are a murderer. -- Franz Kafka
The blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective kafkaesque -- Franz Kafka
I'll shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make an enemy of everyone, speak to no one. -- Franz Kafka
Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked. -- Franz Kafka
The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed. -- Franz Kafka
The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens.This is certainly true,but it proves nothing against the heavens,because heaven means precisely:the impossibility of crows. -- Franz Kafka
The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows. -- Franz Kafka
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so. -- Franz Kafka
It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on Earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little. -- Franz Kafka
If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything. -- Franz Kafka
I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man. -- Franz Kafka
Officials are highly educated but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him ... he won't understand a word of it. -- Franz Kafka
Not everyone can see the truth, but everyone can be the truth. -- Franz Kafka
So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you. -- Franz Kafka
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon. -- Franz Kafka
The true way goes over a line that, rather than spanning heights, is hardly above the ground. It appears more decidedly to make one trip than to be walked along. -- Franz Kafka
Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself. -- Franz Kafka
What is written is merely the dregs of experience. -- Franz Kafka
We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime. -- Franz Kafka
We can't carry on like this. Maybe you can't see it, but I can. I don't want to call this monster my brother, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid of it. -- Franz Kafka
Gregor, open up, I'm pleading with you.' But Gregor had absolutely no intention of opening the door and complimented himself instead on the precaution he had adopted from his business trips of locking all the doors during the night even at home. -- Franz Kafka
It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical. -- Franz Kafka
If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for. -- Franz Kafka
Rolling country, not yet quite mountainous, with woods and lakes, is what I like best. -- Franz Kafka
Everyone has his cross to bear. -- Franz Kafka
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn't mean he knows what it is. -- Franz Kafka
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe. -- Franz Kafka
I mustn't look at you too much, or I won't be able to take my eyes off you at all. -- Franz Kafka
Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer. -- Franz Kafka
A picture of my existence ... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow ... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night. -- Franz Kafka
The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty. -- Franz Kafka
Only here is suffering really suffering. Not in the way that those who suffer here are to be ennobled in some other world for their suffering, but that what passes for suffering in this world is, in another world, without any change and merely without its contrariety, bliss. -- Franz Kafka
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. -- Franz Kafka
The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness. -- Franz Kafka
Gregor's glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather - the
rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window
ledge - made him quite melancholy. -- Franz Kafka
The truth is always an abyss. -- Franz Kafka
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life-the terror of art. -- Franz Kafka
For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light. -- Franz Kafka
I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head. -- Franz Kafka
You belong to the people I have to combat, and you're very comfortable among them, you're even in love with the student, or if you don't love him you do at least prefer him to your husband. -- Franz Kafka
Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don't find yourself. -- Franz Kafka
I do not see the world at all; I invent it. -- Franz Kafka
Writing is a deeper sleep than death.
Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be dragged from my desk at night. -- Franz Kafka
If you come to me you will be leaping into the abyss. -- Franz Kafka
You've seen yourself how difficult the writing is to decipher with your eyes, but our man deciphers it with his wounds. -- Franz Kafka
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable. -- Franz Kafka
It was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: i'm giving up; but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit. -- Franz Kafka
Down Here and up there are all the same to me. Whether I lie here in the gutter and stow away the rain water or drink champagne up there with the same lips makes no difference to me, not even in the taste. -- Franz Kafka
Way
as her hands reached to the back of his father's head and she begged him to spare Gregor's life. -- Franz Kafka
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. -- Franz Kafka
Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul. -- Franz Kafka
Writer speaks a stench. -- Franz Kafka
Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph. -- Franz Kafka
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. -- Franz Kafka
and if you run off down the long streets in the way you are doing - then for this evening, you have broken utterly from your family, who fade away into insubstantiality, while you yourself, absolutely solid, black and clear-cut, slapping your thighs, rise and assume your true form. -- Franz Kafka
You do not need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. -- Franz Kafka
To animalise is humane, to humanise is animal. -- Franz Kafka
In the mountains our throats become free. It's a wonder we don't break into song. -- Franz Kafka
If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being. -- Franz Kafka
But when I want to draw close to someone, and fully commit myself, then my misery is assured. Then I am nothing, and what can I do with nothingness? I must admit that your letter this morning (by the afternoon it had changed) arrived at just the right moment; I was in need of those very words. -- Franz Kafka
I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason. -- Franz Kafka
I am never serious, and therefore I have to make jokes do duty both for jest and earnest. -- Franz Kafka
April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never. -- Franz Kafka
In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world. -- Franz Kafka
I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write. -- Franz Kafka
It's always questionable to intervene decisively in strange circumstances. -- Franz Kafka
From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. -- Franz Kafka
I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it? -- Franz Kafka
The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred. -- Franz Kafka
One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark -- Franz Kafka
There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship. -- Franz Kafka
yet to be moved by music is essentially human; it reflects sensitivity. The life Gregor led as a human being left no room for this kind of appreciation. But, regressing into an animal, his sensibility has become refined rather than coarsened. -- Franz Kafka
We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. -- Franz Kafka
Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again. -- Franz Kafka
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery. -- Franz Kafka
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived. -- Franz Kafka
I was wise, if you like, because I was prepared for death at any moment, but not because I had taken care of everything that was given to me to do, rather because I had done none of it and could not even hope ever to do any of it. -- Franz Kafka
I usually solve problems by letting them devour me. -- Franz Kafka
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. -- Franz Kafka
If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the head, why bother reading it in the first place? ... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27, 1904 -- Franz Kafka
What am I doing in this eternal winter? -- Franz Kafka
The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving. -- Franz Kafka
I am always trying to convey something that can't be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones. -- Franz Kafka
The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation -- Franz Kafka
I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly. -- Franz Kafka
Calm - indeed the calmest - reflection might be better than the most confused decisions -- Franz Kafka
I asked myself at the time: how is it that she is not astonished at herself, that she keeps her mouth closed, and expresses nothing of any wonderment? -- Franz Kafka
Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world ... -- Franz Kafka
Even years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and that consequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned. -- Franz Kafka
How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning? -- Franz Kafka
I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels. -- Franz Kafka
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it. -- Franz Kafka
At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark? -- Franz Kafka
In a way, I was safe writing -- Franz Kafka
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire. -- Franz Kafka
That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand. -- Franz Kafka
The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal. -- Franz Kafka
To every instant there is a correspondence in something outside time. This world here and now cannot be followed by a Beyond, for the Beyond is eternal, hence it cannot be in temporal contact with this world here and now. -- Franz Kafka
There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation. -- Franz Kafka
There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature. -- Franz Kafka
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. -- Franz Kafka
We were created in order to live in Paradise, and Paradise was ordained to serve us.
What was ordained for us has been changed; it is not said
that this has also happened with what was ordained for Paradise. -- Franz Kafka
Guilt is never to be doubted. -- Franz Kafka
Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man. -- Franz Kafka
[Love] has as few problems as a motocar. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road. -- Franz Kafka
Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts. -- Franz Kafka
There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering. -- Franz Kafka
That is a very poor career, but only a poor career give the world the light that an imperfect, but pretty good writer wants to generate
at all costs, unfotunately. -- Franz Kafka
Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man
the most guilty. -- Franz Kafka
Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being. -- Franz Kafka
The more horses you yoke the quicker everything will go - not the rending of the block from its foundation, which is impossible, but the snapping of the traces and with that the gay and empty journey. -- Franz Kafka
Let the future sleep for now, as it deserves. If you wake it too early, you get a groggy present. -- Franz Kafka
Kafka earned his doctorate in law in 1906 but decided against practicing, to the disappointment of his father. -- Franz Kafka
I can't fashion myself into a different person who might be better suited to be his friend. -- Franz Kafka
The main thing holding the family back from a change in living quarters was far more their complete hopelessness and the idea that they had been struck by a misfortune like no one else in their entire circle of relatives and acquaintances. -- Franz Kafka
Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don't, then everything is over with here, once and for all. -- Franz Kafka
The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light. -- Franz Kafka
WHEN Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect. -- Franz Kafka
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms. -- Franz Kafka
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. -- Franz Kafka
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. -- Franz Kafka
Evil is the radiation of the human consciousness in certain transitional positions. It is not actually the sensual world that is amere appearance; what is so is the evil of it, which, admittedly, is what constitutes the sensual world in our eyes. -- Franz Kafka
If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth. -- Franz Kafka
Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it. -- Franz Kafka
Seven o'clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection wasn't packed up yet, and he really didn't feel particularly fresh and active. And even if he caught the train, there w -- Franz Kafka
Enlightenment comes to even the dimmest. It begins around the eyes, and it spreads outward from there- a sight that might tempt one to lie down under the harrow oneself. -- Franz Kafka
The onlookers go rigid when the train goes past. -- Franz Kafka
There am I. I cannot leave. I have nothing to complain about. I do not suffer excessively, for I do not suffer consistently, it does not pile up, at least I do not feel it for the time being, and the degree of my suffering is far less than the suffering that is perhaps my due. -- Franz Kafka
Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent. -- Franz Kafka
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. -- Franz Kafka
He is afraid the shame will outlive him. -- Franz Kafka
There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one's own novel. -- Franz Kafka
If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief. -- Franz Kafka
Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. -- Franz Kafka
My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me. -- Franz Kafka
I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life. -- Franz Kafka
Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be transformed into a cave, in which, no doubt, he would be free to crawl about unimpeded in all directions, but only at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past at the same time? -- Franz Kafka
Youth looks good in anything; unpleasant details lose themselves against the unabating vigour of youth ... -- Franz Kafka
But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted to want to make Gregor's situation even more terrifying, so that then she would be able to do even more for him than now. -- Franz Kafka
Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself. -- Franz Kafka
My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked. -- Franz Kafka
The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. -- Franz Kafka
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me. -- Franz Kafka
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true. -- Franz Kafka
If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I would've quit ages ago. -- Franz Kafka
One day, a leopard stalked into the synagogue, roaring and lashing its tail. Three weeks later, it had become part of the liturgy. -- Franz Kafka
There was always something in me to catch fire, in this heap of straw that I have been. -- Franz Kafka
The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further. -- Franz Kafka
You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible. -- Franz Kafka
The meaning of life is that it stops. -- Franz Kafka
I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity -- Franz Kafka
Once Kafka came to regard any philosophy as nothing more than a system of rules to be enforced, a dogma both bigger and smaller than himself, he withdrew from it. -- Franz Kafka
I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them. -- Franz Kafka
I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even when they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the joys and sorrows of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think. -- Franz Kafka
The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear. -- Franz Kafka
I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference. -- Franz Kafka
Sometimes I'd like to stuff all Jews (myself included) into the drawer of a laundry basket. then open it to see if they've suffocated -- Franz Kafka
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free. -- Franz Kafka
Next time I come here," he said to himself, "I must either bring sweets with me to make them like me or a stick to hit them with. -- Franz Kafka
The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies. -- Franz Kafka
Kafka's fiction examines a universe largely unexplored in the literature preceding him, one full of implications that venture into the remote regions of human psychology. It's a universe with different rules than those governing our reality. And there's no map. -- Franz Kafka
All he wanted to do now was to get up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, and, most important, eat breakfast, and only then consider what to do next, because, as he was well aware, in bed he could never think of anything through to a reasonable conclusion. -- Franz Kafka
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. -- Franz Kafka
The Fathers of the Church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid, because the desert is in our hearts. -- Franz Kafka
One does not have to believe everything is true, one only has to believe it is necessary. -- Franz Kafka
I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired. -- Franz Kafka
Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction
that would not be anything to be deplored
but a weakness of conviction. -- Franz Kafka
In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure. -- Franz Kafka
There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it. -- Franz Kafka
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. -- Franz Kafka
It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones. -- Franz Kafka
The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary, he will come only one day after his arrival, he will not come on the last day, but on the last day of all. -- Franz Kafka
Love is a drama of contradictions. -- Franz Kafka
The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other. -- Franz Kafka
Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists. -- Franz Kafka
How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge? -- Franz Kafka
Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing. -- Franz Kafka
We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so. -- Franz Kafka
The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you. -- Franz Kafka
I can't sleep and the rain is determined not to quit soliloquizing about you all night. I can't help but overhear, my dear. -- Franz Kafka
The limited circle is pure. -- Franz Kafka
Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself. -- Franz Kafka
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. -- Franz Kafka
If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibility;yet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility. -- Franz Kafka
In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality. -- Franz Kafka
Paths are made by walking -- Franz Kafka
The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man's true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep's Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body. -- Franz Kafka
I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it. -- Franz Kafka
But I'm not guilty," said K. "there's been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We're all human beings here, one like the other." "That is true" said the priest "but that is how the guilty speak -- Franz Kafka
And where do you see in all this the influence of the Castle?" asked K. "So far it doesn't seem to have come in. What you've told me about is simply the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbor, specious friendship, things that can be found anywhere, ... -- Franz Kafka
At least descriptive psychology is probably, taken as a whole, a form of anthropomorphism, a nibbling at our own limits. -- Franz Kafka
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922] -- Franz Kafka
One learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs. One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition. -- Franz Kafka
For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word. -- Franz Kafka
Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; Only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop. -- Franz Kafka
No one can crave what truly harms him. -- Franz Kafka
A man doesn't need to fly to the sun, he need only find a patch of clean earth, and crawl there, and let the sun shine on him. -- Franz Kafka
Which of us would not have been happy under Alexander's radiant gaze? But Diogenes frantically begged him to move out of the way of the sun. That tub was full of ghosts. -- Franz Kafka
If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you. -- Franz Kafka
I have this vision: That I would finally come and find you. Scattered pieces of distance would not stand in my way. Not needing words; the barest of glimpses would suffice for you and me. -- Franz Kafka
By his own account he had no real contact with the local colony of his countrymen and virtually no social intercourse with the Russian families and so resigned himself to becoming an incurable bachelor. -- Franz Kafka
Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. -- Franz Kafka
Logic is of course unshakeable, but it cannot hold out against a man who wants to live. -- Franz Kafka
One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so. -- Franz Kafka
I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity. -- Franz Kafka
If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you're okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don't let them go. People like that are hard to find. -- Franz Kafka
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing. -- Franz Kafka
I am forever fettered to myself [ ... ] and that's what I must try to live with. -- Franz Kafka
Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb. -- Franz Kafka
I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast. -- Franz Kafka
From a real antagonist one gains boundless courage. -- Franz Kafka
Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places. -- Franz Kafka
Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position. -- Franz Kafka
Wrap your coat, O sublime dream, around the child. -- Franz Kafka
He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive. -- Franz Kafka
Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath. -- Franz Kafka
In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world's coat. -- Franz Kafka
A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently. -- Franz Kafka
And, incidentally: freedom is all too often self-deception among people. Just as freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so the corresponding deception is among the most exalted of deceptions. -- Franz Kafka
I am as I am, and that's all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person ... -- Franz Kafka
The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination. -- Franz Kafka
Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that. -- Franz Kafka
What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness. -- Franz Kafka
[O]ur needs were quite different; what grips me need hardly touch you at all, and vice versa; what is innocence in you may be guilt in me, and vice versa; what has no consequences for you may be the last nail in my coffin. -- Franz Kafka
I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can. -- Franz Kafka
I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea. -- Franz Kafka
True undoubting is the teacher's part, continual undoubting the part of the pupil. -- Franz Kafka
Torment yourself as little as possible, then you'll torment me less. -- Franz Kafka
First impressions are always unreliable. -- Franz Kafka
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness. -- Franz Kafka
Devilish in my innocence. -- Franz Kafka
He had vented all his woes and now they might as well see the few rags that covered his body, after which they could carry him away. -- Franz Kafka
Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment. -- Franz Kafka
I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner. -- Franz Kafka
Writing is a prayer. -- Franz Kafka
Celibacy and suicide are a similar levels of understanding, suicide and a martyr's death not so by any means, perhaps marriage and a martyr's death. -- Franz Kafka
Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let goof the earth. -- Franz Kafka
The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support. -- Franz Kafka
So then you're free?'
'Yes, I'm free,' said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom. -- Franz Kafka
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie. -- Franz Kafka
But you get used to the air alright in the end. When you're here for the second or third time you'll hardly notice how oppressive the air is. -- Franz Kafka
I would be speaking even with my silence, because at the moment I am nothing but a single word. -- Franz Kafka
But sometimes I really felt as though the starry sky rose and fell with the gasping of his chest. -- Franz Kafka
Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I'll go and close it'." "So -- Franz Kafka
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life. -- Franz Kafka
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. -- Franz Kafka
If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. -- Franz Kafka
Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment. -- Franz Kafka
Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely. -- Franz Kafka
The truth is always an abyss. One must - as in a swimming pool - dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again - laughing and fighting for breath - to the now doubly illuminated surface of things. -- Franz Kafka
You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair. -- Franz Kafka
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. -- Franz Kafka
I'm doing badly, I'm doing well; whichever you prefer. -- Franz Kafka
The founder brought the laws from the lawgiver; the faithful are meant to announce the laws to the lawgiver. -- Franz Kafka
In the fight between you and the world, back the world. -- Franz Kafka
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted. -- Franz Kafka
But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation. -- Franz Kafka
Scratch your flesh raw between your toes, but you won't find the answer. -- Franz Kafka
In that case, I'll miss the thing by waiting for it. -- Franz Kafka
2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart. -- Franz Kafka
One morning Gregor Samsa found himself, in bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin. -- Franz Kafka
Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one's own castle. -- Franz Kafka
Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones. -- Franz Kafka
I was heading for the city in the south, of which they used to say in our village:
'There are people for you! Just think - they never go to sleep!'
'And why don't they?'
'Because they're fools.'
'Don't fools get tired, then?'
'How could fools get tired? -- Franz Kafka
Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action. -- Franz Kafka
His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. -- Franz Kafka
The main thing, when a sword cuts into one's soul, is to keep a calm gaze, lose no blood, accept the coldness of the sword with the coldness of a stone. By means of the stab, after the stab, become invulnerable. -- Franz Kafka
It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so. -- Franz Kafka
Above all, the free man is superior to the man who has to serve another. -- Franz Kafka
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence ... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never. -- Franz Kafka
What are our lungs supposed to do?" I shouted. Shouted: "If they breathe fast they suffocate themselves from inner poisons; if they breathe slowly they suffocate from unbreathable air, from outraged things. But if they try to search for their own rhythm they perish from the mere search. -- Franz Kafka
Nothing, nothing,
the whole long day, nothing. -- Franz Kafka
48 Belief in progress doesn't mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief. -- Franz Kafka
Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm. -- Franz Kafka
I never wish to be easily defined. I'd rather float over other people's minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person. -- Franz Kafka
Most men are not wicked ... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers. -- Franz Kafka
I hope it is nothing serious. On the other hand, I must also say that we business people, luckily or unluckily, however one looks at it, very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for business reasons. -- Franz Kafka
You misinterpret everything, even the silence. -- Franz Kafka
His growing lack of concern for the others hardly surprised him, whereas previously he had prided himself on being considerate. -- Franz Kafka
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith. -- Franz Kafka
Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion? -- Franz Kafka
I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person. -- Franz Kafka
All that matters is that the wound fit the arrow -- Franz Kafka
It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of impatience that they do not return. -- Franz Kafka
The messiah will come when we don't need him anymore. -- Franz Kafka
The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite. -- Franz Kafka
These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful. -- Franz Kafka
Religions get lost as people do. -- Franz Kafka
But questions that don't answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered. -- Franz Kafka
Evil is the starry sky of the Good. -- Franz Kafka
If he stayed at home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times superior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just with a kick. -- Franz Kafka
And thus it happens that the reader, the closer he comes to the novel's end, the more he wishes he were back in the summer with which it begins, and finally, instead of following the hero onto the cliffs of suicide, joyfully turns back to that summer, content to stay there forever. -- Franz Kafka
But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end? -- Franz Kafka
Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations. -- Franz Kafka
In Paradise, as always: that which causes the sin and that which recognizes it for what it is are one. The clear conscience is Evil, which is so entirely victorious that it does not any longer consider the leap from left to right necessary. -- Franz Kafka
I would never have named them in the
first place as they are not the ones I hold responsible. It's the organization that's to blame, the high officials are the ones to blame. -- Franz Kafka
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. -- Franz Kafka
And for a little while he lay still, breathing lightly as if he expected total repose would restore everything to its normal and unquestionable state. -- Franz Kafka
The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened. -- Franz Kafka
So now you know what else existed in the world outside of you, before you knew only about yourself! -- Franz Kafka
People under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins. -- Franz Kafka
It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape. -- Franz Kafka
How lonely it is here, and how well it suits you. -- Franz Kafka
Yet Gregor's sister
was playing so beautifully. Her face was leant to one side,
following the lines of music with a careful and melancholy
expression. Gregor crawled a little further forward, keeping his
head close to the ground so that he could meet her eyes if the
chance came. -- Franz Kafka
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation. -- Franz Kafka
No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won't see a thing.. -- Franz Kafka
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness. -- Franz Kafka
Once such ideas began to torment him, would they ever quite leave him alone? Would they not rather increase in urgency? Would they not threaten his
very existence? -- Franz Kafka
One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom. -- Franz Kafka
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us. -- Franz Kafka
He remembered his family with deep feelings of love. -- Franz Kafka
I never wish to be easily defined. -- Franz Kafka
I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you. -- Franz Kafka
What is gayer than believing in a household god? -- Franz Kafka
I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world. -- Franz Kafka
They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong -- Franz Kafka
Looking on oneself as something alien, forgetting the sight, remembering the gaze. -- Franz Kafka
I carry the bars within me. -- Franz Kafka
Fear of night. Fear of not night. -- Franz Kafka
In a certain sense the Good is comfortless. -- Franz Kafka
Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for. -- Franz Kafka
Evil is whatever distracts. -- Franz Kafka
I like to make use of what I know -- Franz Kafka
Look at this, Willem, he admits he doesn't know the law and at the same time insists he's innocent. -- Franz Kafka
But happiness only if I can raise the world into the Pure, the True, the Immutable. -- Franz Kafka
You are free and that is why you are lost. -- Franz Kafka
Alone -- do you know what that means? -- Franz Kafka
But now you must give me your hand, an agreement of this sort needs to be confirmed with a handshake. Will she shake hands with me? -- Franz Kafka
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us. -- Franz Kafka
Only that which happens is possible. -- Franz Kafka
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted. -- Franz Kafka
What am I doing here in this endless winter? -- Franz Kafka
How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense, -- Franz Kafka
There will be no proof that I ever was a writer. -- Franz Kafka
Illusions are more common than changes in fortune -- Franz Kafka
... my joints ache with fatigue, my dried up body trembles toward its own destruction in turmoils of which I dare not become fully conscious, in my head are astonishing convulsions. -- Franz Kafka
All that you are seeking is also seeking you -- Franz Kafka
Then, at the last moment, I am forced to admit to myself that I was right after all,
and that it was really impossible to go down into the burrow without exposing the
thing I love best, for a little while at least, to all my enemies, on the ground, in the
trees, in the air. -- Franz Kafka
He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found. -- Franz Kafka
The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt. -- Franz Kafka
I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don't stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me. -- Franz Kafka
Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? -- Franz Kafka
My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it. -- Franz Kafka
Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said. -- Franz Kafka
I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly. -- Franz Kafka
I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength. -- Franz Kafka
The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum. -- Franz Kafka
calm consideration was much better than rushing to desperate conclusions. -- Franz Kafka
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else. -- Franz Kafka
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. -- Franz Kafka
Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you. -- Franz Kafka
Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed. -- Franz Kafka
I'm a cage, in search of a bird. -- Franz Kafka
I am a cage, in search of a bird. -- Franz Kafka
Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe. -- Franz Kafka
You see, Willem, he admits he doesn't know the law, and at the same time claims he's innocent. -- Franz Kafka
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted. -- Franz Kafka
Writing [is] a form of prayer. -- Franz Kafka
The meaning of life is that it ends. -- Franz Kafka
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before. -- Franz Kafka
Such a young trial! -- Franz Kafka
You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world - that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature - but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid. -- Franz Kafka
The amount of quiet I need does not exist in the world, from which it follows that no one ought to need so much quiet. -- Franz Kafka
No,' said the priest, 'we must not accept everything is true, we must only accept it is necessary.'
'A dismal thought,' said K., 'it makes untruth into a universal principle. -- Franz Kafka
One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite. -- Franz Kafka
Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light. -- Franz Kafka
Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words. -- Franz Kafka
I am nothing but literature, and can and want to be nothing else. -- Franz Kafka
The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash. -- Franz Kafka
From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true. -- Franz Kafka
However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them -- Franz Kafka
One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory. -- Franz Kafka
But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are. -- Franz Kafka
You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. -- Franz Kafka
Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers. -- Franz Kafka
It's often better to be in chains than to be free. -- Franz Kafka
By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself. -- Franz Kafka
If education tries to make other persons out of us than we essentially are, deeper inside, it stultifies, and reproach matters. -- Franz Kafka
Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes. -- Franz Kafka
It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true. -- Franz Kafka
For everything outside the phenomenal world, language can only be used allusively, but never even approximately in a comparative way, since, corresponding as it does to the phenomenal world, it is concerned only with property and its relations. -- Franz Kafka
It isn't easy to understand exactly what she is saying, for one doesn't know whether she is speaking ironically or seriously, it's mostly serious, but sounds ironic. - "Stop interpreting everything!" said K. -- Franz Kafka
Wherever I turn, the black wave rushes down on me. -- Franz Kafka
Kafka, it seems, is at his best when he fails. -- Franz Kafka
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. -- Franz Kafka
The true word leads; the untrue misleads. -- Franz Kafka
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt. -- Franz Kafka
If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you.
Kafka (note to himself in journal) -- Franz Kafka
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. -- Franz Kafka
What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people. -- Franz Kafka
My heart no longer beats but is a tugging muscle, -- Franz Kafka
Was he an animal that music so captivated him? -- Franz Kafka
One reads in order to ask questions -- Franz Kafka
Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss. -- Franz Kafka
The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. -- Franz Kafka
Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering. -- Franz Kafka
People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'. -- Franz Kafka
I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself. -- Franz Kafka
Logic is doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living. -- Franz Kafka
It's characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he's innocent but also in ignorance. -- Franz Kafka
Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope
but not for us. -- Franz Kafka
A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood. -- Franz Kafka
Like a dog! he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him. -- Franz Kafka
Deceptions are more frequent than changes -- Franz Kafka
It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill -- Franz Kafka
If they were shocked, then Gregor was no longer responsible.' This passage betray's Gregor's premeditation and points to the idea that Gregor wanted to change into a monstrous vermin- something incapable of working in an office. -- Franz Kafka
I passed by the brothel as though
past the house of a beloved. -- Franz Kafka
As far as I have seen, at school ... they aimed at blotting out one's individuality. -- Franz Kafka