Franz Kafka Quotes
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What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.
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I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.
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Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
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The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.
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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.
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It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.
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Religions get lost as people do.
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Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let go of the earth.
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What is gayer than believing in a household god?
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We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.
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One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.
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Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore.
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A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
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The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.
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My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
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So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
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A man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.
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Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.
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The truth is always an abyss.
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My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
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Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.
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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.
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Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
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Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.