Absolutely free, no strings. Sign up to the twice-weekly letter and join our art community.

Quotes by Franz Kafka - (72 quotes)

Franz Kafka - From the Beauty category:

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Beginning category:

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Books category:

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Boredom category:

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Change category:

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Construction category:

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Courage category:

From a real antagonist one gains boundless courage. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Desire category:

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Desperation category:

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Desperation category:

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little of his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Discipline category:

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Drunkenness category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Earth category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Evolution category:

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Experience category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Fear category:

Dread of night. Dread of not-night. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Fear category:

My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Fire category:

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Freedom category:

You are free and that is why you are lost. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Freedom category:

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Freedom category:

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Freedom category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Gender category:

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Goodness category:

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Guidance category:

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Happiness category:

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Happiness category:

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Humanity category:

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Humanity category:

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Humanity category:

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Immortality category:

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow? (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Indolence category:

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Integrity category:

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Journey category:

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Joy category:

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge? (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Knowledge category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Life category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Love category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Opposites category:

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad to find the home one has lost. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Possessions category:

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Possibilities category:

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity. The first is beginning, that is to say, action. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Prayer category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Procrastination category:

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Production category:

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Progress category:

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Questions category:

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Religion category:

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Religion category:

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 - From the Religion category:

Religions get lost as people do. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Religion category:

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Religion category:

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Responsibility category:

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Searching category:

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Silence category:

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Spirituality category:

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Spirituality category:

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Struggle category:

In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Suffering category:

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Suffering category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Survival category:

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Thought category:

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Time category:

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Time category:

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Truth category:

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Truth category:

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)

Franz Kafka - From the Tyranny category:

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Understanding category:

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Universe category:

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Vanity category:

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Windows category:

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Words category:

In argument, similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing. (Franz Kafka)

Franz Kafka - From the Writing category:

Writers speak stench. (Franz Kafka)