Best 453 quotes of Franz Kafka on MyQuotes

Franz Kafka

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    Franz Kafka

    A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

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    Franz Kafka

    A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

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    Franz Kafka

    A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

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    Franz Kafka

    Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

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    Franz Kafka

    A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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    Franz Kafka

    Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

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    Franz Kafka

    A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief.

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    Franz Kafka

    All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

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    Franz Kafka

    All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!

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    Franz Kafka

    All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

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    Franz Kafka

    All language is but a poor translation.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.

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    Franz Kafka

    and in that recurring dream, I found myself trapped in some sort of gigantic game of which I was unfamiliar with the rules; lost in a labyrinthine town of dark and damp, criss-crossing streets, ambiguous characters of uncertain authority having no idea of why I was there nor what I had to do, and where the first sign of the beginning of understanding was the wish to die.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

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    Franz Kafka

    Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.

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    Franz Kafka

    As far as I have seen, at school...they aimed at blotting out one's individuality.

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    Franz Kafka

    Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

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    Franz Kafka

    A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Because of impatience we were driven out [of Paradise]; because of impatience we cannot return.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

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    Franz Kafka

    Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being.

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    Franz Kafka

    Books are a narcotic.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    But Gregor understood easily that it was not only consideration for him which prevented their moving, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate with a few air holes; what mainly prevented the family from moving was their complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune as none of their relatives and acquaintances had ever been hit.

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    Franz Kafka

    By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

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    Franz Kafka

    Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely.

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    Franz Kafka

    Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

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    Franz Kafka

    Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.

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    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.

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    Franz Kafka

    Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.