Franz Kafka Quotes - Page 4

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

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

The truth is always an abyss.

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.

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

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

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?

I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person.

Books are a narcotic.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

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.

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

Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.

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

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

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

He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.

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.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

The Fathers of the Church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid, because the desert is in our hearts.