Franz Kafka Quotes
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Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.
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Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
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Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
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Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
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Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.
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Dread of night. Dread of not-night.
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From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.
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One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.
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There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.
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I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
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Please — consider me a dream.
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'You asking me the way?' 'Yes,' I said, 'since I can't find it myself.' 'Give it up! Give it up!' said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.
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Paths are made by walking.
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There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.
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Writing [is] a form of prayer.
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Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.
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All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.
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A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
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I am free and that is why I am lost.
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Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.
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By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.
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Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.
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If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.