Franz Kafka Literature Quotations

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

Religions get lost as people do.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

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.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

Evil is whatever distracts.

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

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

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

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

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

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

Writers speak stench.

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