Quotes By Franz Kafka

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.

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.

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.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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

Religions get lost as people do.

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

Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

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

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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.

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.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.