“It is possible that some people are sorry for me, but I am not aware of it.”
Source: Kafka's Selected Shorter Writings - New Century Edition with DirectLink Technology
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Famous Franz Kafka Quotes
Source: Letters to friends, family, and editors
“Writing, when it springs from within, is like giving birth, and the child is covered in mucus”
Source: Metamorphosis
Source: On the Tram
“As I lie in bed I assume the shape of a big beetle, a stag beetle or a cockchafer, I think.”
Source: Wedding Preparations in the Country
“The Hunter has been turned into a butterfly. Do not laugh.”
Source: The diaries of Franz Kafka
“A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”
Source: The collected aphorisms
“It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.”
Source: The Penguin complete novels of Franz Kafka
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Basic Kafka
Source: Letters to Felice
“In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.”
“Religions get lost as people do.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?”
Source: Shorter works [of] Franz Kafka
Source: Letters to friends, family, and editors
“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.”
Source: The Basic Kafka
“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
“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: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”
“A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”
“Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.”
Source: Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod