928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

Writers speak stench.

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...