Quotes from Franz Kafka

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.

For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.

The limited circle is pure.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.

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 run into. You only need to change your direction, said the cat, and ate it up.

I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I am always trying to convey something that can't be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.

Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don't find yourself.

No, said the priest, you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.