Franz Kafka Quotes

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage,...

You misinterpret everything, even the silence.

Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opp...

Yours(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Your...

sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless manthe most guilty.

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, t...

I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neut...

It occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walke...

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectiona...

If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.

All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as thin...

During last night’s insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised ...

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading do...

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only ...

I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble t...

I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard,...

Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with...

In a way, I was safe writing

If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.

Today one may pluck out one's very heart and not find it.

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all ...

Guilt is never to be doubted.

Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with ...

My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is li...

In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real fut...

It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or f...

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly m...

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing mysel...

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the...

At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkn...

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbea...

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he co...

When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one nig...

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom...

It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill

Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with peopl...

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,with dim, small lights.Clouds which move across gra...

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to...

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty...

One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently fr...

So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors t...

L'éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are me...

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone w...

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be tra...

It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering spr...

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

The limited circle is pure.

[He] used to be soinsignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

Evil is the starry sky of the Good.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that...

I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I ...

I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort t...

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

One must not cheat anybody not even the world of one's triumph.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; a...

I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us w...

Writer speaks a stench.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

I am as I am, and that's all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut...

He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn't quite dawned on him yet.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and t...

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is n...

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element with...

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm as though I have the true feelin...

Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you mu...

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

Books are a narcotic.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Fear of night. Fear of not night.

Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the li...

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it ...

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty ...

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

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doe...

She is so distinct to me, it's as though I had run my hands all over her.

I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake...

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do an...

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not w...

But all remains unchanged.

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is t...

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell t...

Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obvio...

Writing is prayer.

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fenci...

The meaning of life is that it ends