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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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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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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The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.
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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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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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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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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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Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
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I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
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Writers speak stench.
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Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
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Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.
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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
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God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
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I never wish to be easily defined.
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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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The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil. The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.
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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.