Franz Kafka Quotes

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.

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

Going to pieces. To go to pieces so pointlessly and unnecessarily.

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

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

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

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

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.

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

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

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

The true way goes over a line that, rather than spanning heights, is hardly above the ground. It appears more decidedly to make one trip than to be walked along.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man.

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?

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

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

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Evil is whatever distracts.

I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.

Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

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

You too have weapons.

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

There are two cardinal human sins out of which all others derive, deviate, and dissipate: impatience and lassitude (or perhaps nonchalance). On account of impatience they are driven out of paradise; on account of lassitude or nonchalance they do not return. Perhaps, however, only one main sense of sin is given: impatience. On account of impatience they are driven out, on account of impatience they do not turn back.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

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

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibility;yet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility.

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

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

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

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

We need the books that affect us like a disaster

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

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

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.

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

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.

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

I, however, cannot force myself to use "meat drugs" to cheat on my loneliness.

Writers speak stench.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.