Inspiring Quotes by Franz Kafka
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He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill.

Evil is the starry sky of the Good.

'It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.'

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.

I, however, cannot force myself to use meat drugs to cheat on my loneliness.

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.

He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.

In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

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

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.

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.

The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination.

One day, a leopard stalked into the synagogue, roaring and lashing its tail. Three weeks later, it had become part of the liturgy.

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

Scratch your flesh raw between your toes, but you won't find the answer.

Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction -- that would not be anything to be deplored -- but a weakness of conviction.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

First impressions are always unreliable.

I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.

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.

I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

The Fathers of the Church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid, because the desert is in our hearts.

One must not prostrate oneself before the minor impossibilities, otherwise the major impossibilities would never come into view.

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

When one is alone, imperfection must be endured every minute of the day.

All language is but a poor translation.

I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

I lack nothing. I only needed myself.

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

Most men are not wicked. They are sleepwalkers, not evil evildoers.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

What am I doing in this eternal winter?

Don't forget Kropotkin!

Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again.

I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.

In the struggle between yourself
and the world, second the world.

I have no literary interests; I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else.

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.

But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life -- the terror of art.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

Because of impatience we were driven out; because of impatience we cannot return.

A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

Please -- consider me a dream.

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' -- that wouldn't be enough -- but like a dead man.

Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.

All that you are seeking is also seeking you.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.

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.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.