928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world – that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature – but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.

Please – consider me a dream.

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don’t surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

At the expense of Gregor’s sacrifice, the sister, at the end of the story, stretches her arrogant body and gets the liberation Gregor longed for. Under Gregor’s care first, and then her parents’, the sister enjoys a healthy childhood, one leading to physical and mental development, and one in which she isn’t trapped. Yet our loyalty to Gregor extends even beyond death, and his sister’s cheery success story offers but a bitter pill.

Life is as infinitely great and profound as the immensity of the stars above us. One can only look at it through the narrow keyhole of one’s own personal experience. But through it one perceives more than one can see. So above all one must keep the keyhole clean.

My life was sweeter than other people’s and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.

I, however, cannot force myself to use “meat drugs” to cheat on my loneliness.

The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.