Quotes from Franz Kafka

Then your words of abuse today may turn into a universally valid principle of denigration, for words are magical formulae. They leave fingermarks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye becomes the footprints of history. One ought to watch one's every word.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

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.

My fear... is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin impatience. Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise because of impatience we cannot return.

There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

All language is but a poor translation.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." [ Letter to Max Brod , July 5, 1922]

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Books are a narcotic.