Nobel lecture (1978)
Context: Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him. In their despair a number of those who no longer have confidence in the leadership of our society look up to the writer, the master of words. They hope against hope that the man of talent and sensitivity can perhaps rescue civilization. Maybe there is a spark of the prophet in the artist after all.
“Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.”
"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)
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Franz Kafka 266
author 1883–1924Related quotes
“There is more in a common bubble than those who have only played with them generally imagine.”
[Charles Vernon Boys, Soap-bubbles and the forces which mould them: Being a course of three lectures delivered in the theatre of the London institution on the afternoons of Dec. 30, 1889, Jan. 1 and 3, 1890, before a juvenile audience, Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1896, 10]
“… who cares for a general compliment more than a general lover.”
The Monthly Magazine
" On the Clerical Character http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/ClericalCharacter.htm" (January/February 1818)
Political Essays (1819)
2022, We, the world and history will take from Russia much more than Russian missiles will take from Ukraine (18 April 2022)]
Tertium Organum (1922)
Context: Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world.
In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.
Source: Selected Letters
“You are all a lost generation.”
Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 43
Context: The present generation believes that it knows more about Jesus Christ than any preceding generation knew. Yet we are equally confident that our grandchildren's children will understand Jesus far better than we do. There is something more in him than we have been able to fathom.