Top 425 Quotes & Sayings by Franz Kafka

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German novelist Franz Kafka.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing.

German - Novelist | July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924

Source: Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

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

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Franz Kafka

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

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 history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Franz Kafka

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Franz Kafka

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Franz Kafka

Evil is whatever distracts.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

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

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

Franz Kafka

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

In the struggle between yourself and the world second 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

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

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

Franz Kafka

Religions get lost as people do.

Franz Kafka

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

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

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Franz Kafka

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Franz Kafka

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

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

Franz Kafka

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Franz Kafka

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

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

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

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

Franz Kafka

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

Franz Kafka