Franz Kafka

Religions get lost as people do.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

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

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

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

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

Dont despair not even over the fact that you dont despair.

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

Paths are made by walking.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

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

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

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.

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

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

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

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.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

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

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

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 comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

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.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

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

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

One must not cheat anybody not even the world of ones triumph.

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.

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

The limited circle is pure.

So long as you have food in your mouth you have solved all questions for the time being.

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

Humility provides everyone even him who despairs in solitude with the strongest relationship to his fellow man and this immediately though of course only in the case of complete and permanent humility.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

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

Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it.

A non writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a brief.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

The Bible is a sanctum the world sputum.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

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

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

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

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

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

Hiding places there are innumerable escape is only one but possibilities of escape again are as many as hiding places.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

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.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

You are free and that is why you are lost.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is regarded from its own point of view only a boring something made of wood.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

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

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.

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.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.

Writers speak stench.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

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

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

First impressions are always unreliable.

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

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

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

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

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

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

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