Quotes from Franz Kafka

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.

Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.

Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.

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

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. To what indifference people may come, to what profound conviction of having lost the right track forever.

From a real antagonist one gains boundless courage.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

If education tries to make other persons out of us than we essentially are, deeper inside, it stultifies, and reproach matters.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Fear of night. Fear of not night.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.

Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.