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Quotes by Franz Kafka


Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
– Franz Kafka
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
– Franz Kafka
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
– Franz Kafka
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
– Franz Kafka
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
– Franz Kafka
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
– Franz Kafka
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
– Franz Kafka
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
– Franz Kafka
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
– Franz Kafka
Evil is whatever distracts.
– Franz Kafka
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
– Franz Kafka
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
– Franz Kafka
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
– Franz Kafka
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
– Franz Kafka
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
– Franz Kafka
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
– Franz Kafka
It is your people who make the ultimate difference. You put the investment into training the people and then, when you get invited to the party with the big boys, that is a unique selling point.
– Franz Kafka
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.
– Franz Kafka
May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
– Franz Kafka
My fear is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
– Franz Kafka
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
– Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
– Franz Kafka
No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.
– Franz Kafka
The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
– Franz Kafka
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
– Franz Kafka
Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.
– Franz Kafka
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
– Franz Kafka
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
– Franz Kafka
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.
– Franz Kafka
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.
– Franz Kafka
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.
– Franz Kafka
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
– Franz Kafka
The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.
– Franz Kafka
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
– Franz Kafka
Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.
– Franz Kafka
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
– Franz Kafka
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.
– Franz Kafka
Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
– Franz Kafka
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.
– Franz Kafka
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
– Franz Kafka
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
– Franz Kafka