Quotes from Franz Kafka

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.

I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.

He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn't quite dawned on him yet.

Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man.

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.

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

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

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

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.

There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

As far as I have seen, at school...they aimed at blotting out one's individuality.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived.

Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.

Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results.