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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.
Franz Kafka -
The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.
Franz Kafka
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To animalise is humane, to humanise is animal.
Franz Kafka -
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
Franz Kafka -
I never wish to be easily defined.
Franz Kafka -
Only the moment counts. It determines life.
Franz Kafka -
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.
Franz Kafka -
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.
Franz Kafka
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The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.
Franz Kafka -
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 -
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 -
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
Franz Kafka -
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 -
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka -
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 -
How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.
Franz Kafka -
If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.
Franz Kafka -
I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
Franz Kafka -
The way is infinitely long, nothing of it can be subtracted, nothing can be added, and yet everyone applies his own childish yardstick to it. 'Certainly, this yard of the way you still have to go, too, and it will be accounted unto you.'
Franz Kafka
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One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Franz Kafka -
A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.
Franz Kafka -
There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.
Franz Kafka -
In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.
Franz Kafka