“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
16
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Variant: A cage went in search of a bird.
Quotes from book
The Zürau Aphorisms
Franz Kafka
Original title
Die Zürauer Aphorismen
(German, 1946)
The Zürau Aphorisms are 109 aphorisms of Franz Kafka, written from September 1917 to April 1918 and published by his friend Max Brod in 1931, after his death. They are selected from his writing in Zürau in West Bohemia where he stayed with his sister Ottla, suffering from tuberculosis. His friend Max Brod titled the book "Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg" .
80
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.”
29
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.
13
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”
77
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
106
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
103
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual.”
6
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.
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.
50
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.
54
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.
“To animalise is humane, to humanise is animal.”
9; parody of a statement of Victor Hugo
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
69
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”
28
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.”
56
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
“There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence.”
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.
