Quotes By Franz Kafka

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

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.

Religions get lost as people do.

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

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.

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.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.