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

Delve into Kafka's enigmatic world, exploring his introspective mind and thought-provoking quotes on love, freedom, and the complexities of human existence. Experience the haunting beauty of his words, unraveling the mysteries of life, leaving you mesmerized and longing for more.

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer known for his unique blend of realism and the fantastic. His works, such as The Metamorphosis and The Trial, explore themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, Kafka trained as a lawyer but worked full-time at an insurance company, relegating writing to his spare time. Despite burning 90 percent of his work due to self-doubt, Kafka's writings became influential after his death, inspiring literature and other art forms.

Kafka was a prolific writer who spent most of his free time writing late into the night. He struggled with self-doubt and burned much of his work as a result. Only a small portion of his writings were published during his lifetime and received little public attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, but Brod disregarded this request and had many pieces published. Kafka's writings gained recognition in German-speaking countries after World War II and later influenced literature worldwide in the 1960s. His work has also left a lasting impact on artists, composers, and philosophers alike.

✵ 3. July 1883 – 3. June 1924
Franz Kafka photo
Franz Kafka: 266 quotes129 likes

Franz Kafka Quotes

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 1

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

“… it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle. In the Cathedral”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Variant: No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.
Source: The Trial (1920), Chapter 9

“Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

48
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Please — consider me a dream.”

Franz Kafka

“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10
Context: Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.

“Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.”

Franz Kafka

“So eager are our people to obliterate the present.”

Franz Kafka

“I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Variant: How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.
Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

“I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.”

Franz Kafka

“Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.”

Franz Kafka

“It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

“I lack nothing. I only needed myself.”

Franz Kafka

“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

First lines, Ch. 1
Variant translation: Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
Source: The Trial (1920)
Context: Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“Writing is a deeper sleep than death.
Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be dragged from my desk at night.”

Franz Kafka

“Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920)

“Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

“What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“Writing is prayer.”

Franz Kafka

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“I like to make use of what I know”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!”

Franz Kafka

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)
Source: The Great Wall of China and Other Stories

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".”

Franz Kafka

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”

Franz Kafka

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“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

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

Franz Kafka

“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.”

Franz Kafka

Source: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“I carry the bars within me.”

Franz Kafka

“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.”

Franz Kafka

“… 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