Franz Kafka Quotes - Page 9

We were expelled from Paradise, but it was not destroyed. The expulsion from Paradise was in one sense a piece of good fortune, for if we had not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.

There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.

There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.

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

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

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

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.

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

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one.

Officials are highly educated but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him ... he won't understand a word of it.

I, however, cannot force myself to use "meat drugs" to cheat on my loneliness.

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.

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.

Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely.

Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.

Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let goof the earth.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.

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

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

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.

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