Franz Kafka: Trending quotes (page 11)

“For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.”

“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.”

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

“I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.”

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

“You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don’t know.”

“The man in ecstasy and the man drowning—both throw up their arms.”

“There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.”

“Let the future sleep for now, as it deserves. If you wake it too early, you get a groggy present.”

“Isolation is a way to know ourselves”

“By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.”

“In a way, I was safe writing”

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

“Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.”

“Writer speaks a stench.”

“The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

“I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person.”

“Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.”

“The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.”