Quotes from Franz Kafka

Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.

The longer one hesitates before the door, the more estranged one becomes.

You spend too much time on ephemeras. The majority of modern books are merely wavering reflections of the present. They disappear very quickly. You should read more old books. The classics. Goethe. What is merely new is the most transitory of all things. It is beautiful today, and tomorrow merely ludicrous.

A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.

Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.

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

What is love? After all, it is quite simple. Love is everything which enhances, widens, and enriches our life. In its heights and in its depths. Love has as few problems as a motor-car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.

His growing lack of concern for the others hardly surprised him, whereas previously he had prided himself on being considerate.

Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can't find the right words. All I can say is: Stay with me, don't leave me.

They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus

During last night's insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life…

Don't concern yourself about anybody. Just do what you think is right.

For I underestimate myself, and that itself means an overestimation of others

El hombre martirizado por sus demonios se venga ciegamente en su prójimo

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them.

The messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last.

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints, with dim, small lights. Clouds which move across gray skies past churches with towers darkened in the dusk. One who leans against granite railing gazing into the evening waters, His hands resting on old stones.

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.

Many questions were troubling the explorer, but at the sight of the prisoner he asked only: Does he know his sentence? No, said the officer, eager to go on with his exposition, but the explorer interrupted him: He doesn't know the sentence that has been passed on him? No, said the officer again, pausing a moment as if to let the explorer elaborate his question, and then said: There would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it on his body.

Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat and whispers in my ear, Doctor, let me die.