Quotes from Franz Kafka

I once heard of a young man whose mind was taken up day and night with thoughts of the Castle, he neglected everything else, people feared for his ordinary faculty of reason since all his faculties were always up at the Castle, but in the end it turned out that it wasn't actually the Castle he was thinking of but only the daughter of a scullery maid at the offices, he got her, and then all was fine again.

For a suspect, movement is better than staying still, for someone who is still can always, without realizing it, be in the scales and be weighed with his sins.

Küçük ÅŸempanzeden büyük Akhillius'a kadar bu yeryüzünde gezip dolaÅŸan her yarat???n g?d?klan?r topuÄŸu.

Selfishness is one of the surest signs of profound unhappiness; I was so unsure of everything that I only really possessed what I was actually holding in my hands or in my mouth, or at least what was on its way there –

Los testimonios no concuerdan sino el tema de su ropa: lleva siempre el mismo traje, un chaqué negro con largos faldones. Como es natural, esas diferencias no son efecto de una operación mágica, sino que dependen del humor con el que se mira a Klamm y de que los demás no tienen sino un breve instante para mirarle; las diferencias dependen del grado emocional del espectador y de los innumerables matices de su esperanza o de su desesperación.

Ali svi se slažu u tome da se ne podižu lakomislene optužbe i da se sud, kad jedanput nekog optuži i kad je uvjeren u krivicu optuženog, vrlo teÅ¡ko može razuvjeriti. »TeÅ¡ko?« upita slikar i diže ruku uvis. »Sud se nikada ne mo?e razuvjeriti. Kad bih ovdje na platnu naslikao sve sudije redom i kad biste se Vi pred tim platnom branili imali biste viÅ¡e uspjeha nego pred pravim sudom« »

Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness. The cinema involves putting the eye into uniform, where before it was naked.

Por más que animes tanto como quieras, a alguien que tiene los ojos vendados, a mirar a través de su venda, no verá jamás. No empezará a ver más hasta que se quite la venda. Es ayuda lo que Barnabás necesita, no ánimos.

Die Logik war unerschütterlich, aber einem Menschen, der leben will, widersteht sie nicht.

The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.

One ought, Milena, to take your face between both hands and look steadily into your eyes so that you would recognize yourself in the eyes of the other and from then on be incapable even of thinking the kind of things you wrote in the letter.

Leave me my books! I have nothing else.

No lo haces de forma intencionada, son las circunstancias las que te empujan a ello, pues quieres demasiado a Amalia y deseas verla superior a todas las demás; pero al no hallar nada suficientemente elogiable en la propia Amalia para justificar ese pedestal, rebajas a las demás mujeres para lograr tus propósitos.

who still hadn't lost interest in him and who, with their bulging lips, open mouths, and almost tortured faces—their heads looked as if they had been beaten flat on top and their features shaped in the pain of the beating

I shall move somewhere into the woods and try to improve myself.

shyness, modesty, anxiousness are considered noble and good, because they offer little resistance to one's own expansive impulses)

Jeder Mensch trägt ein Zimmer in sich.

C?s?toria este desigur atestarea celei mai masive forme de autoeliberare ?i de independen??.

He smiled and said, "You want me to tell you the way?" "Yes," I said, "because I can't find it myself." "Give up, give up," he said, and turned away abruptly, like someone who wanted to be alone with his laughter.

Existe um objetivo, mas nenhum caminho; o que chamamos de caminho é hesitação.

On ne peut pas briser de chaînes quand il n'y en a pas de visibles.

Now he remembered this long since forgotten resolution, and quickly forgot it again, like someone pulling a short thread right through the eye of a needle.

And that too is human freedom, I thought, self-controlled movement. What a mockery of holy Mother Nature! Were the apes to see such a spectacle, no theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter.

Av köpekleri henüz avluda oynuyor, ama avlar? daha ÅŸimdiden ormanda ne kadar h?zl? koÅŸarlarsa koÅŸsunlar, ellerinden kurtulamayacaklar.