Franz Kafka Quotes

• The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.

  Franz Kafka

  247

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

  Franz Kafka

  3988

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

  Franz Kafka

  Paradise  

  Franz Kafka (1979). “The Basic Kafka”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

  2106

• When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  1661

• Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors”, p.23, Schocken

  438

• Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

  Franz Kafka

  "The Complete Stories". Book by Franz Kafka, "Investigations of a Dog", 1971.

  2818

• There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

  Franz Kafka

  3954

• 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

  Franz Kafka (2011). “The Zurau Aphorisms”, p.108, Random House

  483

• 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 “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com

  4156

• From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  2151

• I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

  Franz Kafka

  4371

• 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

  Franz Kafka, Nahum Norbert Glatzer (1974). “I am a memory come alive: autobiographical writings”, Schocken

  2544

• You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.

  Franz Kafka

  899

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

  Franz Kafka

  3953

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

  Franz Kafka

  Art  

  5002

• 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

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  3756

• 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

  Believe  

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  3901

• It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka (2016). “Collected Works (Complete Editions: The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Trial, ...)”, p.106, Franz Kafka

  622

• 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

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  5123

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  2962

• The true word leads; the untrue misleads.

  Franz Kafka

  4972

• 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 “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com

  3932

• There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.

  Franz Kafka

  703

• 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

  Light  

  Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold (1981). “The Metamorphosis”, Bantam Classics

  4943

• Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  576

• Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

  Franz Kafka

  Paradise  

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  728

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  4804

• 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

  Franz Kafka (1954). “The castle”, Alfred A. Knopf

  478

• All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

  Franz Kafka

  Franz Kafka “Franz Kafka Vol 2”, Lulu.com

  4263

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate   Moving   Men  

  5100

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