Franz Kafka Quotes

220 Sourced Quotes

A Man Once Said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.
Another Said: I bet that is also a parable.
The First Said: You have won.
The Second Said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The First Said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

Franz Kafka
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Franz Kafka
Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

Franz Kafka
"No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world."

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.

Franz Kafka
What have I in common with Jews? I have almost nothing in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

Franz Kafka
This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.

Franz Kafka
There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.

Franz Kafka
One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

Franz Kafka
Plenty of hope—for God—an abundance of hope—only not for us.

Franz Kafka
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…

Franz Kafka
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.

Franz Kafka
One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark

Franz Kafka
The mediation by the serpent was necessary: Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Franz Kafka
And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.

Franz Kafka
Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let go of the earth.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.

Franz Kafka
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Franz Kafka
Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

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

Franz Kafka
Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Franz Kafka
How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

Franz Kafka
The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

Franz Kafka
People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.

Franz Kafka