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Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Quotes

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Famous Franz Kafka Quotes

“When one has apparently made up one’s mind to spend the evening at home and has donned one’s house-jacket and sat down at the lamplit table after supper and do the particular job or play the particular game on completion of which one is in the habit of going to bed, when the weather out is so unpleasant as to make staying in the obvious choice, when one has been sitting quietly at the table for so long already that one’s leaving must inevitably provoke general astonishment, when the stairwell is in any case in darkness and the street door locked, and when in spite of all this one stands up, suddenly ill at ease, changes one’s coat, reappears immediately in street clothes, announces that one has to go out and after a brief farewell does so, feeling that one has left behind one a degree of irritation commensurate with the abruptness with which one slammed the apartment door, when one then finds oneself in the street possessed of limbs that respond to the quite unexpected freedom one has procured for them with out-of-the-ordinary agility, when in the wake of this one decision one feels capable, deep down, of taking any decision, when one realizes with a greater sense of significance than usual that one has, after all, more ability than one has need easily to effect and endure the most rapid change, and when in this frame of mind one walks the long city streets—then for that evening one has stepped completely outside one’s family, which veers into inessentiality, while one’s own person, rock solid, dark with definition, thighs thrusting rhythmically, assumes it true form. The whole experience is enhanced when at that late hour one looks up a friend to see how he is.”

AphoristicPerfect Miniature
Book:The Complete Stories
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“In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real future. I thought only of things in the present and their present condition, not because of thoroughness or any special, strong interest, but rather, to the extent that weakness in thinking was not the cause, because of sorrow and fear – sorrow, because the present was so sad for me that I thought I could not leave it before it resolved itself into happiness; fear, because, like my fear of the slightest action in the present, I also considered myself, in view of my contemptible, childish appearance, unworthy of forming a serious, responsible opinion of the great, manly future which usually seemed so impossible to me that every short step forward appeared to me to be counterfeit and the next step unattainable.”

FearImpossibleSorrowFutureUnworthyUnattainableCounterfeitContemptible
Book:Diaries, 1910-1923
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“...совпадение в уровне образования, знаний, идеальных устремлений и помыслов, какое Ты, похоже, считаешь необходимым для счастливого брака, на мой взгляд, во-первых, почти невозможно, во-вторых, несущественно, а в-третьих, даже неблагоприятно и нежелательно. Чего требует брак, так это человеческого единения, то есть согласия ещё задолго до всех мнений, согласия, которое нельзя проверить, можно только почувствовать - это невынужденная необходимость двоих людей быть вместе. Необходимость, ничуть не нарушающая свободы каждого из них, ибо нарушает эту свободу только вынужденная необходимость сосуществования с другими людьми, из которого и состоит большая часть нашей жизни.”

Life Together
Book:Приговор. Письма к Фелиции
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“К чему стремиться изменять людей, Фелиция? Это неправильно. Людей надо принимать такими, как есть, или оставлять в покое. Изменить их нельзя, можно разве что внести в их натуру сумбур и смуту. Человек ведь не состоит из отдельных частей, так, чтобы любую можно было изъять и заменить чем-то другим. В человеке, напротив, всё - одно целое, дёрнешь за один кончик, а получается, что против воли дёрнул и за другой.”

Life Together
Book:Приговор. Письма к Фелиции
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“İşte bütün bunlar K.’ya kendisiyle bütün bağların koparıldığı, şimdi doğal olarak her zamankinden daha özgür olduğu ve ona başka zaman yasak olan bu yerde istediği kadar bekleyebileceği hissini verdi; sanki özgürlüğünü kimsenin yapamayacağı bir mücadeleyle elde etmişti ve kimse ona dokunamazdı, onu kovamazdı, hatta onunla konuşamazdı bile; ama bu inanç öylesine güçlüydü ki, sanki aynı zamanda bu özgürlükten, bu bekleyişten, bu dokunulmazlıktan daha anlamsız ve çaresiz bir şey yoktu.”

KafkaFranz KafkaModern ClassicsThe CastleşAto
Author:Franz Kafka
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“I don't know,' I cried without being heard, 'I do not know, If nobody comes, then nobody comes. I've done nobody any harm, nobody's done me any harm, but nobody will help me. A pack of nobodies. Yet that isn't all true. Only, that nobody helps me - a pack of nobodies would be rather fine, on the other hand. I'd love to go on an excursion - why not? - with a pack of nobodies. Into the mountains, of course, where else? How these nobodies jostle each other, all these lifted arms linked together, these numberless feet treading so close! Of course they are all in dress suits. We go so gaily, the wind blows through us and the gaps in our company. Our throats swell and are free in the mountains! It's a wonder that we don't burst into song.”

NobodiesExcursion Into The Mountains
Book:The Complete Stories
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“Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that it sustains this kind of life? Which does not, of course, mean that my life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, at such times it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write — which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.”

WritingWriters On WritingInspirational Writing
Author:Franz Kafka
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“Los testimonios no concuerdan sino el tema de su ropa: lleva siempre el mismo traje, un chaqué negro con largos faldones. Como es natural, esas diferencias no son efecto de una operación mágica, sino que dependen del humor con el que se mira a Klamm y de que los demás no tienen sino un breve instante para mirarle; las diferencias dependen del grado emocional del espectador y de los innumerables matices de su esperanza o de su desesperación.”

PerspectivaSubjetividadEmocionalidad
Book:The castle
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“Sin duda la ciencia avanza, es imparable, incluso avanza con buena velocidad, cada vez más rápido, pero, ¿qué hay de admirable en eso? Es como si se quisiera admirar a alguien porque a medida que pasan los años se hace más viejo y, a consecuencia de ello, la muerte se fuera aproximando cada vez más rápido.”

MuerteCienciaAvanceImparable
Book:La metamorfosis y otros relatos de animales (AUSTRAL EDICIONES ESPECIALES)
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“Quite simple,” said the chairman, “you haven’t really come into contact with our authorities. All those contacts are merely apparent, but in your case, because of your ignorance of the situation here, you think they’re real. As for the telephone: look, in my own house, though I certainly deal often with the authorities, there’s no telephone. At inns and in places like that it may serve a useful purpose, along the lines, say, of an automated phonograph, but that’s all. Have you ever telephoned here, you have? Well then, perhaps you can understand me. At the Castle the telephone seems to work extremely well; I’ve been told the telephones up there are in constant use, which of course greatly speeds up the work. Here on our local telephones we hear that constant telephoning as a murmuring and singing, you must have heard it too. Well, this murmuring and singing is the only true and reliable thing that the local telephones convey to us, everything else is deceptive. There is no separate telephone connection to the Castle and no switchboard to forward our calls; when anyone here calls the Castle, all the telephones in the lowest-level departments ring, or all would ring if the ringing mechanism on nearly all of them were not, and I know this for certain, disconnected. Now and then, though, an overtired official needs some diversion—especially late in the evening or at night—and turns on the ringing mechanism, then we get an answer, though an answer that’s no more than a joke. That’s certainly quite understandable. For who can claim to have the right, simply because of some petty personal concerns, to ring during the most important work, conducted, as always, at a furious pace? Nor can I understand how even a stranger can believe that if he calls Sordini, for instance, it really is Sordini who answers. Quite the contrary, it’s probably a lowly filing clerk from an entirely different department. But it can happen, if only at the most auspicious moment, that someone telephones the lowly filing clerk and Sordini himself answers. Then of course it's best to run from the telephone before hearing a sound.”

TelephonesThe Castle
Book:The castle
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“A few days ago I resumed that 'war-service' - or, more correctly, 'manoeuvre' life, which I discovered years ago to be the most suitable for myself at certain times. Sleeping in bed in the afternoon as long as possible, then walking about for two hours, then staying awake as long as possible. But in this 'long as possible' lies the hitch. 'It isn't possible for long', not in the afternoon, not at night, and yet I'm actually wilted when I get to the office in the morning. And the real prize lies hidden in the depths of the night, in the second, third, fourth hour; but nowadays if I don't go to bed at latest around midnight, night and day and I myself are lost.”

SleepSleeplessnessLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
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“During last night’s insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life…”

DarknessDestructionCalmInsomnia
Book:Letters to friends, family, and editors
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