Quotes by Franz Kafka

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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.

— Franz Kafka

Life

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

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

— Franz Kafka

Courage

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

— Franz Kafka

Life

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

— Franz Kafka

Happiness

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

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

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

— Franz Kafka

Life

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

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

Courage

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

Education

Writers speak stench.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

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

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom

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

— Franz Kafka

Wisdom