Franz Kafka was a 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. Profoundly inspirational Franz Kafka quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
If you’re searching for famous quotes by authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky, powerful George Bernard Shaw quotes and famous George Eliot quotes.
Famous Franz Kafka Quotes
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. Franz Kafka
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it. Franz Kafka
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. Franz Kafka
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived. 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
You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love. Franz Kafka
Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair. Franz Kafka
I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more. Franz Kafka
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. Franz Kafka
Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment. 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
The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation. Franz Kafka
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing. Franz Kafka
Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way. 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
But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm. Franz Kafka
Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. Franz Kafka
Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. 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
I carry the bars within me. Franz Kafka
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. Franz Kafka
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern. Jonathan Safran Foer
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before. Franz Kafka
But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end? Franz Kafka
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. Franz Kafka
No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did. Eugenio Montale
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
The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself. Jorge Luis Borges
A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. Franz Kafka
There were dark hours, of course, such as came to everybody, in which you thought you had achieved nothing at all, in which it seemed to you that only the cases predestined from the start to seucceed came to a good end, which they would have reached in any event without your help, while every one of the others was doomed to fail in spite of all your manœuvres, all your exertions, all the illusory little victories on which you plumed yourself. Franz Kafka
A book should be an ice axe to break the frozen sea within us. Franz Kafka
Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again. Franz Kafka
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. Franz Kafka
If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code. George Steiner
Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within. Franz Kafka
The way she sits on my lap as if it were her proper place! Franz Kafka
Association with human beings lures one into self observation. Franz Kafka
Obstacles start from the ground wherever he looks his Jewishness, passport difficulties, trains, lack of sleep, her husband, his own office obligations, his state of health, his sister’s wedding. Disaster or distraction and for him there is little difference between the two surround him like a design for living. This is the design found in his fiction, which reflects a view of life as proliferation of obstacles splitting off into more obstacles, bewildering the brain by their multiplicity and movement. J. A. Underwood
Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have. Franz Kafka
And actually it’s not at all you I love, but rather the existence you have bestowed on me. 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
For humans the idea of freedom is all too often a means of deceiving themselves. And although freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so is the illusion of freedom among the most exalted of illusions. Franz Kafka
Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle maybe there is none. Franz Kafka
The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence. Elias Canetti
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Franz Kafka
That’s right, Lucy, that’s right, he said, overwhelmed by joy. There’s infinite hope, infinite hope, all the hope in the world. Even for us. Mike Hockney
Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair. Franz Kafka
Writing about Kafka in this day and age is just so easy the world is more bizarre, senseless, surreal than ever it would mean the student isn’t really exerting themselves; today, Kafka is just too relatable. A.D. Aliwat
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived. Franz Kafka
The soul can only blossom forth to its sublime and rare capacities when it feels it is being met with faith. Max Brod
I am a cage, in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
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. Franz Kafka
I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it. Franz Kafka
Your letters arrived today together, at noon, they aren’t there to be read, but to be unfolded, to rest one’s face on while losing one’s mind. Franz Kafka
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. Franz Kafka
For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whose rights are based on their person and not on reason. At least so it seemed to me. Franz Kafka
I usually solve problems by letting them devour me. Franz Kafka
Art is not religion, it doesn’t even lead to religion. But in the time of distress which is ours, the time when the gods are missing, the time of absence and exile, art is justified, for it is the intimacy of this distress the effort to make manifest, through the image, the error of the imaginary, and eventually the ungraspable, forgotten truth which hides behind the error. Maurice Blanchot
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness. Franz Kafka
All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart. Franz Kafka
I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity. Franz Kafka
The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always something, and if for once I am something, I pay for it by being nothing for months on end. Elias Canetti
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues. Franz Kafka
The corpses in the wasteland of past and present haunt us. We are still in Eliot’s land of the dead, imprisoned in Kafka’s penal colony, running from the unexplained rage of the golem, listening to Lovecraft’s drumbeat of horror, and shivering in the chilly shadow of Grau and Murnau’s Nosferatu. We cannot awaken from history. W. Scott Poole
In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world. Franz Kafka
Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness, a story. Haruki Murakami
It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free. Franz Kafka
You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a genetic approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. Is that a metaphor? I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no. Donald Barthelme
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self. Franz Kafka
I am a typical example of Western Jew. This means I don’t have a moment of peace, that nothing has come easily to me, not just the present and the future, but even the past, that thing that each man receives as his birth right even that I have to conquer, and perhaps that is the hardest task. Franz Kafka
Religions get lost as people do. Franz Kafka
There were dark hours, of course, such as came to everybody, in which you thought you had achieved nothing at all, in which it seemed to you that only the cases predestined from the start to seucceed came to a good end, which they would have reached in any event without your help, while every one of the others was doomed to fail in spite of all your manœuvres, all your exertions, all the illusory little victories on which you plumes yourself. Franz Kafka
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. Franz Kafka
The anticipation of an authoritative disclosure of meaning is the means by which that authority is attributed and installed the anticipation conjures its object. Judith Butler
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. Franz Kafka
There is, in Kafka, a sort of sleep worship; he regards sleep as a panacea. Elias Canetti
There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring impatience and laziness. Franz Kafka
For a good part of his Kafka’s work consists of tentative steps toward perpetually changing possibilities of future. He does not acknowledge a single future, there are many; this multiplicity of futures paralyzes him and burdens his step. Elias Canetti
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe but not for us. Franz Kafka
Better Old King Cole and his merry soul than a hundred Franz Kafkas. Marty Rubin
They’re talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves. Franz Kafka
No one ever inhabited the threshold more thoroughly than Kafka. On the threshold of happiness; of the beyond; of Canaan; of the door only open for us. On the threshold of escape, of transformation. Of an enormous and final understanding. No one made so much art of it. And yet if Kafka is never sinister or nihilistic, it’s because to even reach the threshold requires a susceptibility to hope and vivid yearning. There is a door. There’s a way up or over. It’s just that one almost certainly won’t manage to reach it, or recognize it, or pass through it in this life. Nicole Krauss
What do I have in common with the Jews? I don’t even have anything in common with myself. Franz Kafka
Kafka’s long nightmares were but a preparation for the actual horrors we were to experience even to a greater degree. Henry Miller
Writers speak a stench. Franz Kafka
If anyone was ever cognizant of the need and function of litanies, it was Kafka. Elias Canetti
You are free and that is why you are lost. Franz Kafka
I’m alone inside the world of the story, my favorite feeling in the world. Haruki Murakami
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
An information bureau of the human condition, Theodor Adorno called Kafka. David Markson
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. Franz Kafka
Like dreams, his texts combine precise realistic detail with absurdity, careful observation and reasoning on the part of the protagonists with inexplicable obliviousness and carelessness. Hartmut M. Rastalsky
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Franz Kafka
