Franz Kafka famous quotes

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Thinking #Darkness

I am a cage, in search of a bird.
-- Franz Kafka

#Bird #Cages #Chaos

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
-- Franz Kafka

#Art #Believe #Creativity

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Life #Wisdom

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspiring #Freedom #Autism

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
-- Franz Kafka

#Freedom #Healing #Goal

I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Dream #Thinking

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.
-- Franz Kafka

#Youth #Capacity

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
-- Franz Kafka

#Tears #Pieces #World

I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more
-- Franz Kafka

#Dream #Faces #Arms

All language is but a poor translation.
-- Franz Kafka

#Language #Poor #Translations

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
-- Franz Kafka

#Fighting #Swimming #Order

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Fashion #Truth

The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.
-- Franz Kafka

#Ice #Purpose #Stories

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
-- Franz Kafka

#Suicide #Book #Grieving

I never wish to be easily defined.
-- Franz Kafka

#Wish

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
-- Franz Kafka

#Problem #Solve

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
-- Franz Kafka

#Heart #Confusion #Quiet

I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.
-- Franz Kafka

#Spring #Dancing #Storm

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Reading #Ice #Sea

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
-- Franz Kafka

#Hate #Obsession #Intense

One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay.
-- Franz Kafka

#Women #Struggle #Mean

All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.
-- Franz Kafka

#Science #No Fear

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

#Food #Long #Mouths

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

#Book #Keys #Castles

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.
-- Franz Kafka

#Home #Waiting #World

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Men #Solitude

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

#Men

Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.
-- Franz Kafka

#Dry #Rats #Drink

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
-- Franz Kafka

#Forever #Paradise #World

As far as I have seen, at school...they aimed at blotting out one's individuality.
-- Franz Kafka

#Learning #School #Individuality

I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
-- Franz Kafka

#Small Life

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.
-- Franz Kafka

#Trying #Bones #Inexplicable

Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.
-- Franz Kafka

#Moving #Knowing #People

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Tree #Guilt #States

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.
-- Franz Kafka

#Spiritual #Movement #Evolution

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
-- Franz Kafka

#Life #Spiritual #Mind

Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
-- Franz Kafka

#Kissing #Drunk #Way

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

#Book #Ice #Sea

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Insanity #Monsters

I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
-- Franz Kafka

#Tired #Thinking #Hands

If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.
-- Franz Kafka

#Throwing #Abyss

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.
-- Franz Kafka

#Spring #Opposites #Achieve

Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.
-- Franz Kafka

#Self #Doubt #Life Is

I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
-- Franz Kafka

#Love #Acceptance #Light

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
-- Franz Kafka

#Trying #May #Longing

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
-- Franz Kafka

#Desire #Ends

Please — consider me a dream.
-- Franz Kafka

#Dream #Please

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.
-- Franz Kafka

#Love #Together #Village

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
-- Franz Kafka

#Life

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
-- Franz Kafka

#Men #May #Determined

This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.
-- Franz Kafka

#Fighting #Artist #Understanding

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.
-- Franz Kafka

#Understanding #Matter #Misunderstanding

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.
-- Franz Kafka

#Photography #Eye #Light

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

#Fear #Dying

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.
-- Franz Kafka

#People #Adjectives #Labels

I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
-- Franz Kafka

#Missing

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
-- Franz Kafka

#Travel #Taken #Two

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
-- Franz Kafka

#Self #Literature #Association

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Life #Crush

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

#Fire #Literature #Want

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

#Happy Birthday #Beauty #Youth

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
-- Franz Kafka

#Tattoo #Nuts #Giving

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Lying #Two #Deceit

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

#Suffering #Diaries #Clarity

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
-- Franz Kafka

#Believe #Mean #Progress

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

#Business #Able #Kick Ass

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Liberty #Atlas #Literature

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Cheating #Loneliness #Mean

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Depression #Health #Suffering

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

#Believe #Doubt #Tests

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
-- Franz Kafka

#Vices #Crowns #Literature

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#War #Fate #Hands

Evil is whatever distracts.
-- Franz Kafka

#Evil #Literature #Madness

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

#Views #Woods #Boring

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

#Want #Advertising #Advertising Agencies

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

#Cynical #Revolution #Slime

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

#Vanity #Literature #Complacency

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

#Book #Writing #Thinking

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

#Delight #Literature #World

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

#Fear #Fearless #Substance

I am free and that is why I am lost.
-- Franz Kafka

#Lost

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
-- Franz Kafka

#Depression #Feelings #Feeling Lost

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.
-- Franz Kafka

#Infinite #Universe

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

#Thinking #Darkness #Goes On

The meaning of life is that it stops.
-- Franz Kafka

#Life #Death #Life And Death

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
-- Franz Kafka

#Philosophical #Sleep #Men

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
-- Franz Kafka

#Eye #Order #Mind

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.
-- Franz Kafka

#Dregs

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
-- Franz Kafka

#Dream #Lying #Thinking

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
-- Franz Kafka

#Literature #Able #Willing

First impressions are always unreliable.
-- Franz Kafka

#First Impression #Firsts #Impression

Kill me, or you are a murderer.
-- Franz Kafka

#Kill Me #Murderer

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Sleep #Night

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
-- Franz Kafka

#Boss #Brain #Tools

Books are a narcotic.
-- Franz Kafka

#Book #Health

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.
-- Franz Kafka

#Dog #Questions And Answers #Answers

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
-- Franz Kafka

#Funny #Fighting #Literature

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.
-- Franz Kafka

#Life #Lying #Views