Franz Kafka: Trending quotes

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Franz Kafka: 532 quotes129 likes

“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence… Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.”

Franz Kafka book The Silence of the Sirens

"The Silence of the Sirens" (October 1917)

“Go on caring for me.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“…it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.In the Cathedral
Source: The Trial (1920), Chapter 9

“Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.”

“My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.”

“If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you.
Kafka (note to himself in journal)”

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.”

Source: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“I carry the bars within me.”

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

“… it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on Earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.”

Franz Kafka Letter to His Father

Source: Letter to His Father

“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

Source: The Castle (1926)

“No one can crave what truly harms him.”

“My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.”

Source: Diaries, 1910 1923

“there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak”

Franz Kafka Letter to His Father

Source: Letter to His Father

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything”

Franz Kafka book The Castle

Source: The Castle (1926)

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“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”

“All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

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Variant translation: All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena