Quotes by Franz Kafka

“I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.”

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

“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”

“All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.”

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

“Now I can look at you in peace; I dont eat you anymore”

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”

“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”

“I do not read advertisements - I would spend all my time wanting things”

“We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the tree of life.”

“A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”

“It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.”

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

“There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness.”

“What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself”

“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

“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.”

“There will be no proof that I ever was a writer”

“Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.”