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The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
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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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 -
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
Franz Kafka -
I never wish to be easily defined.
Franz Kafka -
To animalise is humane, to humanise is animal.
Franz Kafka -
There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.
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
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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.
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 -
To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.
Franz Kafka -
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 -
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
Franz Kafka -
I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
Franz Kafka
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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 -
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 -
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 -
Only the moment counts. It determines life.
Franz Kafka -
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
Franz Kafka -
The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
Franz Kafka
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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.
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 -
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 -
'Like a dog!' he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.
Franz Kafka