Franz Kafka Quotes

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.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn't mean he knows what it is.

Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.

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.

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.

All language is but a poor translation.

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.

The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.

I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.

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

There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

Paths are made by walking

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

Please — consider me a dream.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

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.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

I do not see the world at all; I invent it.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

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

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.

First impressions are always unreliable.

I never wish to be easily defined.

If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

Only the moment counts. It determines life.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

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

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

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.