Quotes from Franz Kafka

He found the Archimedean point, but he used it against himself; it seems that he was permitted to find it only under this condition

You see, Willem, he admits that he doesn't know the Law and yet he claims he's innocent.

It would otherwise be difficult to imagine what could have induced Frieda to give up her post, she was just sitting there in the taproom like a spider in its web, had threads everywhere that only she knew of; stealing her away against her will would have been absolutely impossible; only love for an inferior, something in other words that was incompatible with her position, could drive her from her post.

I don't agree with that opinion...for if you accept it, you have to consider everything the doorkeeper says as true. But you've already proved conclusively that that's not possible. No, said the priest, you don't have to consider everything true, you just have to consider it necessary. A depressing opinion, said K. Lies are made into a universal system

La salvación de la patria sólo depende de nosotros, artesanos y comerciantes; pero no estamos preparados para semejante empresa; tampoco nos hemos jactado nunca de ser capaces de cumplirla. Hay cierta confusión, y esa confusión será nuestra ruina.  

And what is meant by the girls' innocence is not the usual chastity, but the innocence of sacrifice, an innocence which has just as much to do with the body.

Anything but stop halfway

we're only being punished because you reported us. Otherwise nothing would have happened, even if they had found out what we had done. Do you call that justice? Both of us have proved ourselves as guards over a long period of time, especially me - you have to admit we did a good job from the authorities' point of view...

Would you call it a conversation if the other person is silent and, to keep up the appearance of a conversation, you try to substitute for him, and so imitate him, and so parody him, and so parody yourself.

Hot summer nights, mid-July, when you and I were forever wild.

One does not have to believe everything is true, one only has to believe it is necessary.' 'Depressing thought,' K. said. 'It makes the lie fundamental to world order.

To die would mean nothing else than to surrender a nothing to the nothing, but that would be impossible to conceive, for how could a person, even only as a nothing, consciously surrender himself to the nothing, and not merely to an empty nothing but rather to a roaring nothing whose nothingness consists only in its incomprehensibility.

What wouldn't I do out of fear for you.

Because I don't even consider them guilty; it's the organization that's guilty, it's the high officials who are guilty

He feels more deserted with a second person than when alone. If he is together with someone, this second person reaches out for him and he is helplessly delivered into his hand. If he is alone, all mankind reaches out for him – but the innumerable outstretched arms become entangled with one another and no one reaches to him.

He was too tired to take in all of the consequences of the story; they led him into unaccustomed areas of thought, toward abstract notions more suited for discussion by the officials of the court than by him.

I therefore place it sealed in your hands, wholly, utterly - just as I have already placed myself in them.

When I really asked myself a question, I still responded, here there was still something to be wrested from me, from this heap of straw that I have been for five months and whose fate, it seems, is to be set alight in the summer and to burn away before the spectator can blink.

their devilish kindness, their murderous love

Eräs Pahuuden tehokkaimmista viettelykeinoista on kutsua mukaan taisteluun. Se on samanlainen kuin naisen kanssa käytävä taistelu, joka johtaa vuoteeseen.

it's often better to be in chains than to be free.

antes de cada uno de sus estallidos de contrición volvía los ojos para comprobar si los espectadores eran numerosos.

Sand: The French are all actors; but only the weakest among them act in the theater[

Ensimmäinen merkki kajastavasta ymmärryksestä on kuoleman kaipuu.