Franz Kafka: Doing

Franz Kafka was author. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Franz Kafka: 532   quotes 127   likes

“Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

3 (20 October 1917); as published in The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954); also in Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings (1954); variant translations use "cardinal sins" instead of "main human sins" and "laziness" instead of "indolence".
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Du kannst Dich zurückhalten von den Leiden der Welt, das ist Dir freigestellt und entspricht Deiner Natur, aber vielleicht ist gerade dieses Zurückhalten das einzige Leid, das Du vermeiden könntest.
104
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

World , Nature , Suffering

“Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Variant: I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.
Source: Letters to Milena

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

31
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“We too must suffer all the suffering around us. We all have not one body, but we have one way of growing, and this leads us through all anguish, whether in this or in that form. Just as the child develops through all the stages of life right into old age and to death (and fundamentally to the earlier stage the later one seems out of reach, in relation both to desire and to fear), so also do we develop (no less deeply bound up with mankind than with ourselves) through all the sufferings of this world. There is no room for justice in this context, but neither is there any room either for fear of suffering or for the interpretation of suffering as a merit.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

103
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life , Death , Age , World

“Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

106
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Solitude , Drawing , Despair

“We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?”

Franz Kafka

Letter to Oskar Pollak (8 November 1903); cited from Briefe, 1902-1924 (1958) edited by [Max Brod]], p. 27<!-- New York: Schocken --> ; translation from Franz Kafka, Representative Man (1991) by Frederick R. Karl, p. 98 <!-- New York: Ticknor & Fields -->
Context: We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.

Children

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

Franz Kafka

Source: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Winter

“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

Suffering

“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)

Understanding

“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
Life , Feeling , Time

“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.”

Franz Kafka

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

World , Fear

“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)

Love , Nature

“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)

Understanding , Question