Franz Kafka Quotes

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.

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 is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.

They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong

I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Let me remind you of the old maxim: 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.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

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

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

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

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

One reads in order to ask questions

I lack nothing. I only needed myself.

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.

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

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

Love is a drama of contradictions.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

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

Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.

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

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.

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

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

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

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

From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. To what indifference people may come, to what profound conviction of having lost the right track forever.

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

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

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true.

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

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

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

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.

So eager are our people to obliterate the present.

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.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

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.

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.

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.

I carry the bars within me.