Franz Kafka quotes
Born
July 1883 Prague, Bohemia Austria-Hungary.
Died
3 June 1924.
Occupation
Novelist, Short story writer.
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic.
He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.
– Franz Kafka
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
– Franz Kafka
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
– Franz Kafka
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
– Franz Kafka
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
– Franz Kafka
The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.
– Franz Kafka
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
– Franz Kafka
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
– Franz Kafka
Dread of night. Dread of not-night.
– Franz Kafka
Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
– Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
– Franz Kafka
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
– Franz Kafka
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
– Franz Kafka
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
– Franz Kafka
Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.
– Franz Kafka
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.
– Franz Kafka
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.
– Franz Kafka
Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
– Franz Kafka
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
– Franz Kafka
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
– Franz Kafka
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
– Franz Kafka
Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
– Franz Kafka
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
– Franz Kafka
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
– Franz Kafka
By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.
– Franz Kafka
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
– 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
If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
– Franz Kafka
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
– Franz Kafka
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
– Franz Kafka
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
– Franz Kafka
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
– Franz Kafka
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
– Franz Kafka
It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.
– Franz Kafka