Franz Kafka Quotes

“Evil is whatever distracts.”

“In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: to believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.”

“The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all.”

“The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.”

“In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.”

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”

“Suffering is the positive element in this world; indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.”

“My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.”

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

“Dread of night. Dread of not-night.”

“My life is a hesitation before birth.”

“If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?”

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”

“Religions get lost as people do.”

“No sooner said than done: so acts your man of worth.”

“The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual.”

“The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.”

“We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life.”

“Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony.”

“Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

“I am made of literature; I am nothing else, and cannot be anything else.”

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

“Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.”

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”