Franz Kafka: Trending quotes

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Franz Kafka: 532 quotes129 likes

“"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.”

(June 1914)
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923 (1948)
Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“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.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

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

"Description of a Struggle".
The Complete Stories (1971)

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

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

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

Source: Blue Octavo Notebooks

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

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“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”

Franz Kafka Letter to His Father

Source: Letter to His Father

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

Source: The Castle

“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.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

“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.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

79
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“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.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

71
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)