Quotes from Franz Kafka

to be sure, all that pointless standing about and waiting day after day always starting all over again without any prospect of change, will wear a man down and make him doubtful, and ultimately incapable of anything but that despairing standing about.

It's always questionable to intervene decisively in strange circumstances.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.

Extraordinary,' said the Burgomaster, 'extraordinary. And now do you think of staying here in Riva with us?' 'I think not', said the Hunter with a smile, and, to excuse himself, he laid his hand on the Burgomaster's knee. 'I am here, more than that I do not know, further than that I cannot go. My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.' (The Hunter Gracchus)

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.

I never wish to be easily defined. I'd rather float over other people's minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable, more like a transparent, paradoxically, iridescent creature rather than an actual person.

There is a place where I never was before: here breathing is different, and more dazzling than the sun is the radiance of a star beside it.

I hope it is nothing serious. On the other hand, I must also say that we business people, luckily or unluckily, however one looks at it, very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for business reasons.

Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.

I was making for that city in the south of which it was said in our village: There you'll find queer folk! Just think, they never sleep! And why not? Because they never get tired. And why not? Because they're fools. Don't fools get tired? How could fools get tired!---Children on a Country Road, Contemplation.

Whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; that is, he belongs to the Law and as such is set beyond human judgment.

My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.

Sometimes, and I don't know why, everything I want to say to you presses upon me with great intensity, like a crowd of people all trying to squeeze through a narrow door at once. And I have said nothing to you, less than nothing, for everything I have written recently has been false—not fundamentally, of course, because fundamentally everything is true—but with so much confusion and falseness on the surface that no one could be expected to see through it.

If you were walking across a plain, had an honest intention of walking on, and yet kept regressing, then it would be a desperate matter; but since you are scrambling up a cliff, about as steep as you yourself are if seen from below, the regression can only be caused by the nature of the ground, and you must not despair.

The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it.

A Little Fable Alas, said the mouse, the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must ...

But happiness only if I can raise the world into the Pure, the True, the Immutable.

Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; Only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.

Before setting foot in the Holy of the Holies you must take off your shoes, yet not only your shoes, but everything; you must take off your traveling-garment and lay down your luggage; and under that you must shed your nakedness and everything that is under the nakedness and everything that hides beneath that, and then the core and the core of the core, then the remainder and then the residue and then even the Holy of the Holies and let yourself be absorbed by it; neither can resist the other.

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

He accepted it as a fundamental principle for an accused man to be always forearmed, never to let himself be caught napping, never to let his eyes stray unthinkingly to the right when his judge was looming up on the left--to the right when his judge was looming up on the left--and against that very principle he kept offending again and again.

For humans the idea of freedom is all too often a means of deceiving themselves. And although freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so is the illusion of freedom among the most exalted of illusions.

The messiah will come when we don't need him anymore.