“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion!”

— Franz Kafka , book The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis (1915)
Context: What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspici…" by Franz Kafka?

Franz Kafka 266

author 1883–1924

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 2

“Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Source: Resignation (1849), l. 197

“What was it, then, about the development of capitalism that gave rise to modern racial ideology?”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 4, The Colour Of Money, p. 112

“So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

To Imagination (1846)

“Compensate for the regret and negligence in previous works by working hard in the future.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Misnad al-Imām al-Hādī, p. 304.
General

“Why… are there any market transactions at all? Why not all production carried on by one big firm?… First, as a firm gets larger, there may be decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function, that is, the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm may rise… Second, it may be that as the transactions which are organized increase, the entrepreneur fails to place the factors of production in the uses where their value is greatest, that is, fails to make the best use of the factors of production… Finally, the supply price of one or more of the factors of production may rise, because the "other advantages" of a small firm are greater than those of a large firm.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1930s-1950s, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), p. 394-5

“This work is not for the many; but in the unconscious, perfectly natural, irony of self-delusion, in all parts intelligible to the intelligent reader, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the autobiographer, I know of no equal in our literature…This and The Entail would alone suffice to place Galt in the first rank of contemporary novelists.”

John Galt (novelist) (1779–1839) British writer

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, manuscript note written in his copy of The Provost; cited from Thomas Middleton Raysor (ed.) Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 344.
Criticism

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

"Will," included in Maurine: And Other Poems, p. 145 (1888). Often quoted by Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji.
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)
Context: There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
All things give way before it soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea seeking river in its course,
Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?

“Slaving gave rise to a division of labor”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 7, The Slave Trade, p. 229.
Context: Slaving gave rise to a division of labor in which the business of capture, maintenance, and overland transport of slaves was in African hands, while Europeans took charge of transoceanic transport, the "seasoning" or breaking in of slaves, and their eventual distribution.

“Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”

Virginia Woolf A Letter to a Young Poet

"A Letter to a Young Poet"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion!”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Franz Kafka 266

Related quotes

Related topics