Franz Kafka Quotations | Page 2

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.

The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.

All that you are seeking is also seeking you

The truth is always an abyss.

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.

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.

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.

I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.

All language is but a poor translation.

Please — consider me a dream.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn't mean he knows what it is.

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.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.

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.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard, neither for people nor events; I feel that I have experienced nothing, learned nothing, that I actually know less than the average schoolboy, and that what I do know is superficial, and that every second question is beyond me. I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking. I can't even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk...

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

I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

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

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.

I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

If education tries to make other persons out of us than we essentially are, deeper inside, it stultifies, and reproach matters.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.

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.

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.

I never wish to be easily defined.

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.

Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.

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

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.

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.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

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.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".

I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

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.

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.

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

Books are a narcotic.

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

I am free and that is why I am lost.

There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. 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. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.

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.

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.

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

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.

Writers speak stench.

Only the moment counts. It determines life.

Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

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

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

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.

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

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.

Torment yourself as little as possible, then you'll torment me less.

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.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.

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

I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.

They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.

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.

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.

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.

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

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.

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.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.

They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.

It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill

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.

I lack nothing. I only needed myself.

sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.

There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.

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.

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.

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.

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.

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.

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.

First impressions are always unreliable.