Franz Kafka Quotes
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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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Please — consider me a dream.
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Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.
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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.'
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From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
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Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.
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I carry the bars within me.
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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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'Like a dog!' he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.
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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.
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How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.
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Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
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One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
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Only the moment counts. It determines life.
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How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.
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We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.
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I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
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May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
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You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
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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.
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The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
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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.
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To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.
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Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.