Franz Kafka Quotes: 266 Quotes on Love, Freedom, and the Complexities of Human Existence

Works

The Silence of the Sirens

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka: 266 quotes 127 likes

Famous Franz Kafka Quotes

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

Franz Kafka

Letter to Oskar Pollak http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001062.php (27 January 1904)
Variant translations:
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Variant: A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Context: 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?... 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.

“I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.”

Franz Kafka

“All language is but a poor translation.”

Franz Kafka

“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.”

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Quotes about the world

“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

52, Im Kampf zwischen Dir und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt.
Aphorism 52 in Unpublished Works 1916-1918 http://www.kafka.org/index.php?unpub1916_1918
Variant translations:
In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.
In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Variant: In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.

“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.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Du kannst Dich zurückhalten von den Leiden der Welt, das ist Dir freigestellt und entspricht Deiner Natur, aber vielleicht ist gerade dieses Zurückhalten das einzige Leid, das Du vermeiden könntest.
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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“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 book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“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.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: 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.

“The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment — an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Quotes about the trip

“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

Variant: What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Source: The Zürau Aphorisms

“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 book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite”

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka: Trending quotes

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."

[, July 5, 1922]”

Franz Kafka

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Variant: A cage went in search of a bird.

Search , Bird

“Evil is whatever distracts.”

Franz Kafka

Source: book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Evil

Franz Kafka Quotes

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

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Life

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Love

“I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Missing You

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”

Franz Kafka

“I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”

Franz Kafka

Books

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Feeling , Thinking

“Kill me, or you are a murderer.”

Franz Kafka

“sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man
the most guilty.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Sleep

“But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

“If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Fear , Sleep

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Beauty , Thinking , Light , Happiness

“Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

Decision

“And don't demand any sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it from me more than I myself and yet many things elude me, I'm sure, perhaps everything eludes me.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Sincerity

“One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life , Hate , Understanding , Appearance

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

Franz Kafka

Beauty , Youth , Beauty , Happiness

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Franz Kafka

Soul , Fashion , Water

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”

Franz Kafka

Heartbreaking , Wise , Moving On , For Parents

“Books are a narcotic.”

Franz Kafka

Books

“By believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

Franz Kafka

Attributed to Kafka in Ambiguous Spaces (2008) by NaJa & deOstos (Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos), p. 7, and a couple other publications since, this is actually from Report to Greco (1965) by Nikos Kazantzakis, p. 434
Misattributed

Passion

“Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.

“The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

Decision

“Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

3 (20 October 1917); as published in The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954); also in Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings (1954); variant translations use "cardinal sins" instead of "main human sins" and "laziness" instead of "indolence".
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

Franz Kafka

Good Night , Kiss , Night

“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

Love , Death , Books , Suicide

“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”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

Source: The Castle (1926)

Dreams

“Yours

(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Time

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Variant: You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
Source: Letters to Felice‎

Imagination , Heart

“Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

“What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.”

Franz Kafka

“I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Health , Thinking

“For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Light

“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Variant: I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.
Source: Letters to Milena

“So then you’re free?’
‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.”

Franz Kafka book Amerika

Source: Amerika

Freedom

“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 book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective "kafkaesque”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“You too have weapons.”

Franz Kafka

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

Books , Justice , Law , Parting

“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

Fear

“Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing, which cannot be exaggerated. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression of everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true.
Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most — you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Hat matt nicht die Augen, um sich sie auszureißen und das Herz zum gleichen Zweck? Dabei ist es ja nicht so schlimm, das ist Übertreibung und Lüge, alles ist Übertreibung, nur die Sehnsucht ist wahr, die kann man nicht übertreiben. Aber selbst die Wahrheit der Sehnsucht ist nicht so sehr ihre Wahrheit, als vielmehr der Ausdruck der Lüge alles übrigen sonst. Es klingt verdreht, aber es ist so.
Auch ist es vielleicht nicht eigentlich Liebe wenn ich sage, daß Du mir das Liebste bist; Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle.
Letter to Milena Jesenská (14 September 1920) http://www.abyssal.de/zitate/liebe.htm
Variant translations:
In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.
Letters to Milena (1952)

Love , Truth , Lie , Time

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

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Question , Nature , Past

“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Evil

“Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)