"A book must be the ax for..." - Quote by Franz Kafka

“One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.”

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

“One reads in order to ask questions”

“Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.”

“Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.”

“Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.”

“Let us read, and let us dance — these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”

“Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.”

“I cannot write in English, because of the treacherous spelling. When I am reading, I only hear it and am unable to remember what the written word looks like.”