Franz Kafka Quotes (127 Quotes)

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life -- the terror of art.

Evil is whatever distracts.

No people sing with such pure voices as those that live in deepest hell what we take for the song of angels is their song.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

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

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

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

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

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

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

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

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.

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

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

What have I in common with Jews I have hardly anything in common with myself

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

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.

Writers speak stench.

Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Who has the gift to recognize beauty, will not live long.

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.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

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

Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

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

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

From the true antagonist, illimitable courage is transmitted to you

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

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

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

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

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.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.