Franz Kafka Quotes

Franz Kafka - Quotes It is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us merely for forgetting for the thousandth time? - Investigations Of A Dog Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations. - Investigations Of A Dog So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. - Investigations Of A Dog You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and 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. - Journals 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. - Journals A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. - Journals A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it. - Journals Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. - Journals By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. - Journals In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure. - Journals I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us ... 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. - Journals I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond. - Journals

Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being. - Journals Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery. - Journals 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. - Journals The splendor of life 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. - Journals Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. - Journals We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the Tree of Life. - Journals Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. - Journals My fear . . . is my substance, and probably the best part of me. - Journals 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. - Journals There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return. - Journals A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. - Journals What have I common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself .... - Journals One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph. - Journals

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. - Journals In the fight between you and the world, back the world. - Journals I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. - Journals So the best resource is to meet everything as calmly as possible, to make yourself be lured into taking a single necessary step, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, to yield to the non-conscious that you believe far away while it is precisely what is burning you, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you, that is, to enlarge the final peace of the graveyard and let nothing survive save that. A characteristic movement in such a condition is to run your little finger along your eyebrows. - Journals It is consequently incorrect to say that I have known the words 'I love you'; I have known only the expectant stillness that should have been broken by my 'I love you', that is all I have known, nothing more. - Journals Why do we lament over the fall of man? We were not driven out of Paradise because of it, but because of the Tree of Life, that we might not eat of it. - Parables and Paradoxes We were expelled from Paradise, but Paradise was not destroyed. In a sense our expulsion from Paradise was a stroke of luck, for had we not been expelled, Paradise would have been destroyed. - Parables and Paradoxes If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted. - Parables and Paradoxes The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day. - Parables and Paradoxes Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony. - Parables and Paradoxes For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie sleekly 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. - The Complete Stories

Human nature, ever changing and as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint. If it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, rending everything asunder, the wall, its bonds, its very self. - The Great Wall Of China When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. - The Metamorphosis But they, lovelier than ever, craned and twisted, let their gruesome hair float free in the air, stretched their claws wide on the rocks, they wanted to allure no more, all they wanted was to catch for as long as possible the reflected radiance from the great eyes of Odysseus. - The Silence Of The Sirens If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted. - The Tower of Babel The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other. - The Trial A court of law has a curious attraction. - The Trial Justice must stand quite still, or else the scales will waver and a just verdict will become impossible. - The Trial Accused men are often attractive. It's a remarkable phenomenon, almost a natural law. - The Trial Logic is doubtless unshakeable, but it cannot stand a man who wants to go on living. - The Trial It's often better to be in chains than to be free. - The Trial Someone must have told on Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. - The Trial