Franz Kafka Quotes

1. “Paths are made by walking.”

— Franz Kafka

2. “I am free and that is why I am lost.”

— Franz Kafka

3. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

— Franz Kafka

4. “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

— Franz Kafka

5. “Evil is whatever distracts.”

— Franz Kafka

6. “There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Patience Quotes

7. “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

— Franz Kafka

8. “I am a cage, in search of a bird.”

— Franz Kafka

9. “Most men are not wicked. They are sleepwalkers, not evil evildoers.”

— Franz Kafka

10. “Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self.”

— Franz Kafka

11. “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

— Franz Kafka

12. “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Wisdom Quotes

13. “Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Love You Quotes, Different Quotes

14. “Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Quotes About Veganism, Compassion Quotes

15. “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”

— Franz Kafka

16. “Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

— Franz Kafka

17. “Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”

— Franz Kafka

18. “I lack nothing. I only needed myself.”

— Franz Kafka

19. “I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Desire Quotes

20. “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

— Franz Kafka

21. “I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”

— Franz Kafka

22. “Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”

— Franz Kafka

23. “If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Reading Quotes, Quotes About Sea

24. “Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Freedom Quotes

25. “If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you’re okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don’t let them go. People like that are hard to find.”

— Franz Kafka

26. “I never wish to be easily defined.”

— Franz Kafka

27. “All that you are seeking is also seeking you.”

— Franz Kafka

28. “There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.”

— Franz Kafka

29. “Isolation is a way to know ourselves.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

31. “I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

— Franz Kafka

32. “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

— Franz Kafka

33. “I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.”

— Franz Kafka

34. “I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”

— Franz Kafka

35. “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Book Quotes

36. “Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle – maybe there is none.”

— Franz Kafka

37. “From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Freedom Quotes, Healing Quotes

38. “Love is a drama of contradictions.”

— Franz Kafka

39. “A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a “brief.””

— Franz Kafka

40. “God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Tattoo Quotes

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

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Understanding Quotes

42. “All language is but a poor translation.”

— Franz Kafka

43. “In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

45. “I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

47. “A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Book Quotes

48. “What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.”

— Franz Kafka

49. “Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Book Quotes

50. “We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes