“How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?”
Source: Shorter works [of] Franz Kafka
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Famous Franz Kafka Quotes
“In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: Letters to friends, family, and editors
“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.”
Source: The Basic Kafka
“He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
“The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.”
Source: Shorter works [of] Franz Kafka
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Dread of night. Dread of not-night.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Penguin complete novels of Franz Kafka
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
“So eager are our people to obliterate the present.”
Source: The Basic Kafka
“Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”
Source: 1910-1913. Tr. by Joseph Kresh
Source: The diaries of Franz Kafka
“It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.”
Source: The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text
Source: The Metamorphosis: And Other Stories
“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
Source: Letters to Ottla and the Family
Source: The diaries of Franz Kafka
“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.”
Source: Franz Kafka Vol 2