Franz Kafka Quotes - Page 6

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me.

In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure.

One reads in order to ask questions

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.

I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.

What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

Love has as few problems as a motor car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.

I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.

Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.

Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

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.

Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

One day, a leopard stalked into the synagogue, roaring and lashing its tail. Three weeks later, it had become part of the liturgy.

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

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.