Franz Kafka Quotes

I don't feel particularly proud of myself. But when I walk alone in the woods or lie in the meadows, all is well.

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.

Lost among these entirely strange people.

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

It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

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

You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don’t know.

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

What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.