Franz Kafka Quotes

“He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.”

“The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.”

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

“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.”

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

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

“There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.”

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

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

“But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.”

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

“Psychology is the description of the reflection of the terrestial world in the heavenly plane, or, more correctly, the description of a reflection such as we, soaked as we are in our terrestial nature, imagine it, for no reflection actually occurs, only we see earth wherever we turn.”

“Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.”

“Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

“I don't know who the great lawyers are, and I presume you can't get to them. I know of no case where it can be said for certain that they took part. They defend some people, but you can't get them to do that through your own efforts, they only defend the ones they want to defend. But I assume a case they take on must have progressed beyond the lower court. It's better not to think of them at all, otherwise you'll find the consultations with the other lawyers, their advice and their assistance, extremely disgusting and useless.”

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

“I do not see the world at all; I invent it.”

“Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world.”

“That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.”

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”

“It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.”

“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.”

“Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.”

“From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.”