Franz Kafka Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Franz Kafka's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Writer Franz Kafka's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 420 quotes on this page collected since July 3, 1883! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.

  • All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

  • Because of impatience we were driven out [of Paradise]; because of impatience we cannot return.

    Franz Kafka (1979). “The Basic Kafka”, p.236, Simon and Schuster
  • When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

    Book  
    Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors”, p.23, Schocken
  • Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

    "The Complete Stories". Book by Franz Kafka, "Investigations of a Dog", 1971.
  • There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

  • It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

    Franz Kafka (2011). “The Zurau Aphorisms”, p.108, Random House
  • Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that.

    Franz Kafka “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com
  • From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

  • Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

    Franz Kafka, Nahum Norbert Glatzer (1974). “I am a memory come alive: autobiographical writings”, Schocken
  • You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.

  • Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

  • Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.

  • 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 (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let goof the earth.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

    Franz Kafka (2016). “Collected Works (Complete Editions: The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Trial, ...)”, p.106, Franz Kafka
  • To every instant there is a correspondence in something outside time. This world here and now cannot be followed by a Beyond, for the Beyond is eternal, hence it cannot be in temporal contact with this world here and now.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. To what indifference people may come, to what profound conviction of having lost the right track forever.

  • The true word leads; the untrue misleads.

  • At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?

    Franz Kafka “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com
  • There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.

  • He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

    Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold (1981). “The Metamorphosis”, Bantam Classics
  • Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

    Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”
  • Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

  • There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought

    Franz Kafka (1954). “The castle”, Alfred A. Knopf
  • All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

    Franz Kafka “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com
  • One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 420 quotes from the Writer Franz Kafka, starting from July 3, 1883! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!