Franz Kafka Quotes
Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
Variant: There is a point of no return. This point has to be reached.
Now the sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Variant: A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us
My life was sweeter than other people’s and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.
There is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.
I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.
We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life.
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.
It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.
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.
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Variant:
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
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.
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one’s ability to do so.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked upon.
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one.
One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.
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.
Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility.
I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and 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.
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.
Variant: If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.
