Jo Franz Quotes

An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance.

The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work,the writer provides food for the prince.

You say I'm small? I certainly can relate, although it is a matter of perspective. The distance is deceptive, my friend, you standtoo low.

When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.

Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.

It's actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.

It is the emotions to which one objects in Germany most of all.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

If human beings are immortal, so are animals. If matter has the ability to remember, it also has the ability to think.

Grief, first take on shape! what is shapeless causes fear and torment but when the enemy materializes, half the victory is won.

Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discardsit with indifference.

Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.

In the long run, only woman remains true to mankind's foremost mission. Whatever she achieves, she achieves through herself, and alone. Man's master is the--public.

Do you call the jewel blind, because your eye is?

Many said selfishness was the flaw of our modern age; but then self-conceit emerged from a corner of the deepest hell to join selfishness.

What is done for the children is doubly beneficial, since their success, obvious to everyone, educates the parents as well.

I've never been on good terms with God, but now I'm becoming His intimate, for He is truly absolute and extremely legitimate.

Chance arrives unannounced. It emerges, and when it leaves, we are lucky if the changes it has produced are only external.

Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

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.

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

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.

I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.

This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it.

Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.

You too have weapons.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

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.

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

The founder brought the laws from the lawgiver; the faithful are meant to announce the laws to the lawgiver.

it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.