928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

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

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.

From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.

My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.

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.