100 Quotes by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka, the enigmatic Czech writer, is renowned for his haunting and surreal narratives that explore the absurdity and alienation of human existence. Kafka's works often feature characters trapped in labyrinthine bureaucracies and facing the inexplicable forces of authority. His masterpiece, "The Metamorphosis," tells the story of Gregor Samsa waking up as a giant insect, serving as a metaphor for the estrangement and isolation many experience in modern society. Kafka's unique narrative style, characterized by its introspective and unsettling tone, has given rise to the term "Kafkaesque" to describe situations that evoke feelings of entrapment and the absurd. Despite his relatively small body of work published during his lifetime, Kafka's impact on literature has been profound, influencing the existentialist movement and leaving an indelible mark on modern fiction's exploration of the human psyche.
Franz Kafka Quotes
Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore. (Meaning)
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. (Quote Meaning)
In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world. (Meaning)
A cage went in search of a bird. (Quote Meaning)
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. (Meaning)
There is hope, but not for us. (Quote Meaning)
Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair. (Meaning)
My fear is my substance, and probably the best part of me. (Quote Meaning)
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. (Meaning)
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. (Quote Meaning)
Idleness is the beginning of all vice. (Meaning)
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you're okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don't let them go. People like that are hard to find.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply 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.
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. (Quote Meaning)
I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.
I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn't mean he knows what it is.
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
I am a cage, in search of a bird. (Meaning)
I am free and that is why I am lost.
People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.
I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.
Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.
All language is but a poor translation.
I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.
Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.
The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.
Paths are made by walking (Quote Meaning)
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.
Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.
Please — consider me a dream.
The meaning of life is that it stops. (Meaning)
Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself. (Quote Meaning)
We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.
In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.
Isolation is a way to know ourselves.
I do not see the world at all; I invent it.
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure (Meaning)
Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.
First impressions are always unreliable.
If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.
I never wish to be easily defined.
Only the moment counts. It determines life.
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 dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. (Quote Meaning)
This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
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.
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make
Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.
Books are a narcotic.
The truth is always an abyss.
I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
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.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
I have spent my life resisting the desire to end it.
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.
A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."
Most men are not wicked. They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph.
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
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.
No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".
We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure.
There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Kill me, or you are a murderer.
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
I lack nothing. I only needed myself.
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
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.
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.
As far as I have seen, at school...they aimed at blotting out one's individuality.
I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.
Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have. (Meaning)
The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.
Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong
Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.
My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world. (Quote Meaning)
Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us. (Meaning)
Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.
The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.
If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
One reads in order to ask questions
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.
Love is a drama of contradictions.
Writing means revealing oneself to excess.
Evil is whatever distracts. (Quote Meaning)
Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.
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.
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.
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
The true word leads; the untrue misleads.
I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.
I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.
There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.
You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.
Dread of night. Dread of not-night.
There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Writing is a form of prayer.
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
From a real antagonist one gains boundless courage.
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.
The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.
No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.
There's an infinite amount of hope but not for us.
The limited circle is pure.
The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.
We need the books that affect us like a disaster
What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.
No one can crave what truly harms him.
Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.
Evil is the starry sky of the Good.
When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.
The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.
Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.
If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.
Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world.
It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.
I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.
There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.
― Franz Kafka Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
