Franz Kafka Quotes

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.

Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.

There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

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.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?

Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug.

There's an infinite amount of hope but not for us.

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

I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person.

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.

There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

What is gayer than believing in a household god?

A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.

Every one of us has a bad conscience, which he tries to escape by going to sleep as quickly as possible.

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

My life was sweeter than other people's and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.

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.

Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists.

But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.

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.

Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

In a way, I was safe writing

You're not cross with me, though?" he said. She pulled her hand away and answered, "No, no, I'm never cross with anyone.

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.

I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.

There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.

Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.

If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.

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

I like to make use of what I know

Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.

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.

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.

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.

It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary, he will come only one day after his arrival, he will not come on the last day, but on the last day of all.

True undoubting is the teacher's part, continual undoubting the part of the pupil.

It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.

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