Franz Kafka quotes

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

— Franz Kafka

“In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.”

— Franz Kafka

“Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth. ”

— Franz Kafka

“It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law. ”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

“Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.”

— 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

“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

“ 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.”

— Franz Kafka

“The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.”

— Franz Kafka

“Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.”

— 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 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.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

“Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery. ”

— Franz Kafka

“If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?”

— Franz Kafka

“Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.”

— Franz Kafka

“The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.”

— Franz Kafka