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“The thornbush is old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.”

Franz Kafka book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)

“Previously I did not understand why I got no answer to my question; today I do not understand how I could believe I was capable of asking. But I didn’t really believe, I only asked.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

36
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

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

Franz Kafka

Source: Franz Kafka: A Biography (1960), p. 74

“Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.”

Franz Kafka book Investigations of a Dog

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)

“There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

The Castle (1926)

“Religions get lost as people do.”

Franz Kafka book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)

“The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached.”

Franz Kafka book Parables and Paradoxes

"Paradise"
Parables and Paradoxes (1946)

“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.”

Franz Kafka book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)

“There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

99
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

53
Variant translation: One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”

Franz Kafka book Investigations of a Dog

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)

“There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.”

Franz Kafka book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)

“Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate — he has little success in this — but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. This assumes that he does not need both hands, or more hands than he has, in his struggle against despair.”

Franz Kafka

19 October 1921
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923 (1948)

“To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.”

Franz Kafka

"A Hunger Artist"
The Complete Stories (1971)

“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 book The Zürau Aphorisms

74
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10, end of the book

“Expulsion from Paradise is in its main aspect eternal: that is to say, although expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in the world unavoidable, the eternity of the process (or, expressed in temporal terms, the eternal repetition of the process) nevertheless makes it possible not only that we might remain in Paradise permanently, but that we may in fact be there permanently, no matter whether we know it here or not.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

65; a slight variant of this statement was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
The expulsion from Paradise is in its main significance eternal:
Consequently the expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in this world irrevocable, but the eternal nature of the occurrence (or, temporally expressed, the eternal recapitulation of the occurrence) makes it nevertheless possible that not only could we live continuously in Paradise, but that we are continuously there in actual fact, no matter whether we know it here or not.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

90
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)