Franz Kafka Quotes

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

“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.”

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

“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”

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

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

“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.”

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…”

“Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.”

“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”

“It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill”

“Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul.”

“In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.”

“August 2, 1914: Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.”

“I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity”

“It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.”

“I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.”

“There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.”

“But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.”

“Like tired dogs they stand there,
because they use up all their strength
in remaining upright in one's memory.”

“the poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man”

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

“A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.”

“Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world…”

“Like a dog!”

“What is written is merely the dregs of experience.”

“"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.”

“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.”

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

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”