Franz Kafka Quotes

“We need the books that affect us like a disaster”

“Only the moment counts. It determines life.”

“He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.”

“It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.”

“A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.”

“Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.”

“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

“The truth is always an abyss.”

“April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.”

“Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists.”

“True undoubting is the teacher's part, continual undoubting the part of the pupil.”

“The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.”

“All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.”

“If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.”

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

“Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.”

“In one and the same human being there are cognitions that, however utterly dissimilar they are, yet have one and the same object,so that one can only conclude that there are different subjects in one and the same human being.”

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

“Love is a drama of contradictions.”

“If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.”

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.”

“What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.”

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”