Franz Kafka Quotes (127 Quotes)

Now I can look at you in peace I don't eat you anymore

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

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

... The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

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.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

Death confronts us not unlike the historical battle scene that hangs on the wall of the classroom. It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

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.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

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

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

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the tree of life.

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

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

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

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

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

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

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