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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.
Franz Kafka
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Was he an animal, that music could capture him so completely? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the longed for, unknown, nourishment.
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What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?
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If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing.
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I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.
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They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.
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Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.
Franz Kafka
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Officials are highly educated but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him... he won't understand a word of it.
Franz Kafka
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Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one's own castle.
Franz Kafka
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All science is methodology with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It is a husk, but not more than everything except the One.
Franz Kafka
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Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.
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I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don't stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.
Franz Kafka
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This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it.
Franz Kafka
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I passed by the brothel as though
past the house of a beloved.
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There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.
Franz Kafka
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For everything outside the phenomenal world, language can only be used allusively, but never even approximately in a comparative way, since, corresponding as it does to the phenomenal world, it is concerned only with property and its relations.
Franz Kafka
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Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.
Franz Kafka
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That is what people are like in my district. Always expecting the impossible from the doctor. They have lost their ancient beliefs; the parson sits at home and unravels his vestments, one for another; but the doctor is supposed to be omnipotent with his merciful surgeon's hands. Well, as it pleases them; I have not thrust my services on them.
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The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.
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I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.
Franz Kafka
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If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.
Franz Kafka
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It requires enormous presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold as it were of everything in the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening. That is why the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the day. Once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace for the rest of the day.
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My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.
Franz Kafka
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Franz Kafka
Creative Commons
Born:
July 3, 1883
Died:
June 3, 1924
(aged 40)
Bio:
Franz Kafka was a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.
Known for:
The Metamorphosis (1915)
The Trial
The Castle
The Judgment (1913)
Most used words:
life
time
human
man
true
knowledge
people
impatience
alone
feel
love
evil
indestructible
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