Franz Kafka Quotes
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There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.
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When . . . some leisurely passer-by stopped . . . and spoke of cheating, that was in its way the stupidest lie ever invented by indifference and inborn malice, since it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward.
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If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
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Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.
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Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.
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The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.
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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.
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Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.
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You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make.
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I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
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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.
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In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.
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I never wish to be easily defined.
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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.
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Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
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Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
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Writers speak stench.
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By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
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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.
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God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
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Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.
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A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
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I have spent my life resisting the desire to end it.
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If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything