Quotessence
Home / Authors / Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsLiteratureWorldLettersKafkaLoveWritingMenPeopleWayDoeLifeFranz KafkaKnowsThinkingI CanKafkaesqueLetters To MilenaBookHumans

Famous Franz Kafka Quotes

“Y, sin embargo, mentiría si dijera que la extraño. Es el hechizo más perfecto y más doloroso. Usted está aquí, igual que yo y con mayor intensidad aún; allí donde yo estoy, está usted, como yo y más intensamente aún. No bromeo. A veces imagino que usted -que está aquí- extraña mi presencia y pregunta: "¿Pero dónde está? ¿Acaso no escribía diciendo que estaba en Merano? [...] El día es tan corto. Transcurre y termina con usted y fuera de usted sólo hay unas pocas nimiedades. Apenas me queda un rato para escribirle a la verdadera Milena, porque la Milena más verdadera aún ha estado aquí todo el día, en la habitación, en el balcón, en las nubes.”

LettersSpanish
Author:Franz Kafka
Create image

“Mientras estaba tendido allí, a un paso de mí yacía un escarabajo, patas arriba, desesperado. No podía enderezarse, me habría gustado ayudarlo, era tan fácil hacerlo, bastaba un paso y un empujoncito para brindarle una ayuda efectiva. Pero lo olvidé a causa de la carta. Además no podía ponerme de pie. Por fin, una lagartija logró que volviera a tomar conciencia de la vida que me rodeaba. Su camino la llevó hasta el escarabajo, que ya estaba totalmente inmóvil. De modo que no fue un accidente, me dije, sino una lucha mortal, el raro espectáculo de la muerte natural de un animal. Pero la lagartija al deslizarse por encima del escarabajo, lo enderezó. Por uno instantes continuó inmóvil, como muerto, pero luego trepó la pared como la cosa más natural. Es probable que eso me haya brindado, de alguna manera, un poco de coraje. Lo cierto es que me puse de pie, bebí leche y le escribí a usted.”

LettersSpanish
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“And all the time it's raining outside and doesn't look as though it will ever stop. Doesn't worry me at all, I'm under cover and am only embarrassed to eat my opulent Gabelfrühstük in front of the house painter who at the moment is standing on the scaffolding before my windows and who, furious about the rain which has temporarily stopped and about the amount of butter I'm putting on my bread, is splashing the windows unnecessarily (which is probably also only my imagination, since he is no doubt 100 times less preoccupied with me than I with him). No, now he is really working in pouring rain and thunder.”

RainLettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“Do you know, by the way, that you were given to me as a present for my Confirmation (there's something like a Jewish Confirmation)? I was born in '83, so I was 13 when you were born. The 13th birthday is a special occasion. Up near the altar in the temple I had to recite a piece learned by heart with great difficulty, then at home I had to make a brief speech (also learned by heart). I also received many presents. But I imagine that I was not entirely satisfied, one particular present I missed, I demanded it from heaven; it hesitated until 10 August.”

LettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“I'm afraid I'm not very well prepared for your birthday, have slept even worse than usual, head hot, eyes burned out, torturing temples, coughing as well. I'm afraid I couldn't recite a lengthy congratulation without coughing. Fortunately no congratulation is required, just thanks that you exist in this world, where at first sight, I wouldn't have suspected (you see, I don' have much knowledge of the world, either - except that, in contrast to you, I admit it) that you could be found. And I thank you for it (is this gratitude?) with a kiss precisely like the one on the railway station, although you didn't like it (today I'm rather obstinate).”

LettersBirthday WishesLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“What you wrote about the people, Milena - 'nemáte síly milovat' - 'who haven't got the strength to love' - was correct, even though while writing it down you didn't consider it correct. Perhaps their talent for love consists only in the ability to be loved. And even in this exists a qualifying distinction for these people. If one of them says to his beloved: 'I believe that you love me', then this is something completely different and much less than when he says: 'I'm loved by you'. These, of course, are not lovers but grammarians.”

LoveLettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“Certainly I understand Czech. I've meant to ask you several times why you don't ever write to me in Czech. I'm not suggesting that you don't master German. Most of the time you master it surprisingly well and if once in a while you don't, it bows before you of its own accord, and this is particularly pleasing, for this is something a German doesn't dare to expect from his language, he doesn't dare to write so personally. But I wanted to read you in Czech because it is part of you, because only there is the whole Milena (the translation confirms it), whereas here is just the one from Vienna or the one preparing herself for Vienna. So Czech, please. And send the feuilletons you mention, too. Let them be shabby, you have also read your way through the shabbiness of my story, how far I don't know. Perhaps I can do this, too; but if I can't, then I'll remain stuck in the very best of prejudices.”

LanguageLetters
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“The most beautiful of your letters (and that means a lot, for as a whole they are, almost in every line, the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me in my life) are those in which you agree with my 'fear' and at the same time try to explain that I don't need to have it. For I too, even though I may sometimes look like a bribed defender of my 'fear', probably agree with it deep down in myself, indeed it is part of me and perhaps the best part. And as it is my best, it is also perhaps this alone that you love. For what else worthy of love could be found in me? But this is worthy of love.”

LettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“So far as the beggar woman is concerned, there was certainly neither anything good nor anything bad in it, I was simply too distracted or too much preoccupied with one thing to act in any other way but according to vague memories. And one such memory says, for instance: 'Don't give too much to beggars, you'll regret it later.' Once as a very small boy I was given a Sechserl and felt a great urge to hand it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Grosse and the Kleine Ring. But the sum seemed to me enormous, a sum which probably never before had been given to a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the beggar woman to do something so unheard-of, but give it to her I felt I must. I therefore changed the Sechserl into ten Kreuzers, gave one to the beggar woman, ran round the whole block of the Town Hall and the arcade near the Kleine Ring, arrived from the left as a completely new benefactor, gave the beggar woman another Kreuzer, started to run again and actually made this round ten times (or maybe not quite so many, for I believe the beggar woman lost her patience later and disappeared). In any case, toward the end I was so exhausted, morally as well, that I ran straight home and cried until my mother replaced the Sechserl. You see, I have bad luck with beggars, but I declare myself prepared to pay out my entire present and future fortune in the smallest Viennese bank notes to a beggar woman standing by the Opera, on condition that you're present and I may feel you close to me.”

LettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“Certainly I understand Czech. I've meant to ask you several times why you don't ever write to me in Czech. I'm not suggesting that you don't master German. Most of the time you master it surprisingly well and if once in a while you don't, it bows before you of its own accord, and this is particularly pleasing, for this is something a German doesn't dare to expect from his language, he doesn't dare to write so personally. But I wanted to read you in Czech because it is part of you, because there is the whole Milena (the translation confirms it), whereas here is just the one from Vienna or the one preparing herself for Vienna. So Czech, please. And send the feuilletons you mention, too. Let them be shabby, you have also read your way through the shabbiness of my story, how far I don't know. Perhaps I can do this, too; but if I can't then I'll remain stuck in the best of prejudices.”

LanguageLetters
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“Nevertheless, the chief thing is: Whatever the others surrounding you in a wide circle may say about you, in superior wisdom, in bestial (except that beasts are not like that) denseness, in diabolical kindness, in homicidal love - I, I, Milena, know to my last fibre that whatever you do you will be doing right, whether you stay in Vienna, or do now this, now that. What, after all, should I be doing with you if I didn't know this? As in the deep sea there is no tiniest spot that isn't always under the heaviest pressure, so it is with you, but any other life is a disgrace and makes me sick to think of; until recently I thought I couldn't endure life, couldn't endure people, and was very ashamed of it, but you confirm to me now that it wasn't life that seemed undendurable to me.”

LettersLetters To Milena
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image

“I just read, the letter, your essays, again ad again, convinced that such pros does not exist merely for its own sake, but serves as a signpost on the road to a human being, a road one keeps following, happier and happier, until arriving at the realization some bright moment that one is not progressing simply running around inside one's own labyrinth, only more nervously, more confused than before.”

LettersKafka
Book:Letters to Milena
Create image