60 Franz Kafka Quotes That Will Change Your Perspective on Life

Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Quotes

Franz Kafka Quotes - Photo by Poster Boy from Flickr

• “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

• “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense",”

• “Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

• “He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”

• “He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

• “What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.”

• “I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”

• “Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”

• “What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?”

Franz Kafka quotes from his bestselling works

• “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…”

• “The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

• “However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them”

• “Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath.”

• “A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.”

• “A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.”

Franz Kafka The Trial quotes

Franz Kafka Quotes - Photo by arnoKath from Flickr

• “It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

• “It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”

• “From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

• “it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.”

• “Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

• “The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

• “But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak”

• “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.”

• “You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”

• “I like to make use of what I know”

• “I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

• “Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”

• “It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”

• “The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light.”

• “Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement.”

Franz Kafka The Castle quotes

Franz Kafka Quotes - Photo by Anthony Ingram from Flickr

• “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”

• “You misinterpret everything, even the silence.” ― Franz Kafka, The Castle

• “If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”

• “One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”

• “Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.”

• “Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

• “Deceptions are more frequent than changes”

• “It isn’t easy to understand exactly what she is saying, for one doesn’t know whether she is speaking ironically or seriously, it’s mostly serious, but sounds ironic. - “Stop interpreting everything!” said K.”

• “Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.”

• “Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts.”

• “those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.”

• “to be sure, all that pointless standing about and waiting day after day always starting all over again without any prospect of change, will wear a man down and make him doubtful, and ultimately incapable of anything but that despairing standing about.”

• “How suicidal happiness can be!”

• “Hers was a nature made for intrigue, apparently working for no purpose, like the wind, according to strange and distant orders of which no one ever got a sight.”

• “all [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters”

Franz Kafka quotes about life and love

Franz Kafka Quotes about life

Franz Kafka Quotes - Photo by jaśmina stysiak from Flickr

• “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

• “Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”

• “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

• “The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.”

• “By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.”

• “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.”

• “The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.”

• “The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one.”

• “In a certain sense you deny the existence of this world. You explain life as a state of rest, a state of rest in motion.”

Franz Kafka love quotes

Franz Kafka Quotes - Photo by Sergio Morchon from Flickr

• “I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”

• “Love has as few problems as a motor car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.”

• “In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.”

• "I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea."

• “Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world.”

• "If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you're okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don't let them go. People like that are hard to find."