Quotes By Franz Kafka

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

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.

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

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Religions get lost as people do.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.