Franz Kafka World Quotations

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.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

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.

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.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

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.

Psychology is the description of the reflection of the terrestial world in the heavenly plane, or, more correctly, the description of a reflection such as we, soaked as we are in our terrestial nature, imagine it, for no reflection actually occurs, only we see earth wherever we turn.

I do not see the world at all; I invent it.

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.

The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.

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.

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.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world...

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

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.

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.

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.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.

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

The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.

there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak

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.

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.

You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.

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.

In a certain sense you deny the existence of this world. You explain life as a state of rest, a state of rest in motion.