Franz Kafka Quotes - Page 12

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

There will be no proof that I ever was a writer.

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

They did not know what we can now guess at, contemplating the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it appears in ordinary existence.

I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.

This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer.

The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil. The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash.

But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.

it was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: "i'm giving up; but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit.

The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

Everything is deception: seeking the minimum of illusion, keeping within the ordinary limitations, seeking the maximum. In the first case one cheats the Good, by trying to make it too easy for oneself to get it, and the Evil by imposing all too unfavorable conditions of warfare on it. In the second case one cheats the Good by keeping as aloof from it as possible, and the Evil by hoping to make it powerless through intensifying it to the utmost.

Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world.

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

Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

What is gayer than believing in a household god?

You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.

In Paradise, as always: that which causes the sin and that which recognizes it for what it is are one. The clear conscience is Evil, which is so entirely victorious that it does not any longer consider the leap from left to right necessary.

A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.

Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.

Because of impatience we were driven out [of Paradise]; because of impatience we cannot return.