Franz Kafka Quotes

220 Sourced Quotes

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
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.

Franz Kafka
Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Franz Kafka
No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

Franz Kafka
We too must suffer all the suffering around us. We all have not one body, but we have one way of growing, and this leads us through all anguish, whether in this or in that form. Just as the child develops through all the stages of life right into old age and to death (and fundamentally to the earlier stage the later one seems out of reach, in relation both to desire and to fear), so also do we develop (no less deeply bound up with mankind than with ourselves) through all the sufferings of this world. There is no room for justice in this context, but neither is there any room either for fear of suffering or for the interpretation of suffering as a merit.

Franz Kafka
What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
"Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true."

Franz Kafka
There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.

Franz Kafka
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
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.

Franz Kafka
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?

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
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.

Franz Kafka
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
The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash.

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

Franz Kafka
Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world.

Franz Kafka
I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.

Franz Kafka
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka
A first sign of the beginning of knowledge is the wish to die.

Franz Kafka
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

Franz Kafka
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Franz Kafka
If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o'clock.

Franz Kafka
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.

Franz Kafka
If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief.

Franz Kafka
The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.

Franz Kafka
If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.

Franz Kafka
I think you should only read those books which bite and sting you.

Franz Kafka
Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.

Franz Kafka