Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.
Here Is A Collection Of Franz Kafka Most Inspiring Quotes: Kafka Love Quotes. Franz Kafka Quotes About Life, Death and Love. Quotes And Sayings On Books, Writing and Reading By Franz Kafka.
Franz Kafka Quotes and Sayings
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self.
I am free and that is why I am lost.
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.
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
I am a cage, in search of a bird.
I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
All language is but a poor translation.
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.
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.
A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
The meaning of life is that it stops.
Books are a narcotic.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
Paths are made by walking.
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
I never wish to be easily defined. I'd rather float over other people's minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived.
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe... but not for us.
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 usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.
I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.
In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.
Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
They say ignorance is bliss... they're wrong.
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.
In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.
Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.
People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
I can't think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there's no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.
Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication-it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness-it is all that I have-and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.
Love is a drama of contradictions.
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.
Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
The truth is always an abyss. One must - as in a swimming pool - dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again - laughing and fighting for breath - to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
Kill me, or you are a murderer.
First impressions are always unreliable.
You are free and that is why you are lost.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.
What am I doing here in this endless winter?
They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.
Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.
I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.
I am not well; I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.
We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.
For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
I'm doing badly, I'm doing well, whichever you prefer.
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.
I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
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.
I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.
Evil is whatever distracts.
You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make.
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.
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.
Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.
Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.
If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.
You misinterpret everything, even the silence.
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.
Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.
He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.
If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.
Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
I lack nothing. I only needed myself.
I only fear danger where I want to fear it.
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.
Calm - indeed the calmest - reflection might be better than the most confused decisions.
If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.
Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.
There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.
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