Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that.”

— Franz Kafka

452. “Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.”

— Franz Kafka

453. “Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.”

— Franz Kafka

454. “With a kind of perverse obstinancy his father refused to take off his official uniform even in the house; and while his robe hung uselessly on the clothes hook, his father dozed, completely dressed, in his chair, as if he were always ready for duty and were waiting even here for the voice of his superior.”

— Franz Kafka

455. “The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.”

— Franz Kafka

456. “Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; Only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.”

— Franz Kafka

457. “And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.”

— Franz Kafka

458. “As I lie in bed I assume the shape of a big beetle, a stag beetle or a cockchafer, I think.”

— Franz Kafka

459. “And, incidentally: freedom is all too often self-deception among people. Just as freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so the corresponding deception is among the most exalted of deceptions.”

— Franz Kafka

460. “Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.”

— Franz Kafka

461. “Enlightenment comes to even the dimmest. It begins around the eyes, and it spreads outward from there- a sight that might tempt one to lie down under the harrow oneself.”

— Franz Kafka

462. “I am never serious, and therefore I have to make jokes do duty both for jest and earnest.”

— Franz Kafka

463. “Going to pieces. To go to pieces so pointlessly and unnecessarily.”

— Franz Kafka

464. “You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all.”

— Franz Kafka

465. “The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.”

— Franz Kafka

466. “Lost among these entirely strange people.”

— Franz Kafka

467. “A piece like a segment has been cut out of the back of his head. The sun looks in and the whole world with it. It makes him nervous, it distracts him from his work, and moreover it irritates him that he should be the very one excluded from the spectacle.”

— Franz Kafka

468. “It is possible that some people are sorry for me, but I am not aware of it.”

— Franz Kafka

469. “The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.”

— Franz Kafka

470. “The true way goes over a line that, rather than spanning heights, is hardly above the ground. It appears more decidedly to make one trip than to be walked along.”

— Franz Kafka

471. “What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself, and really ought to go stand myself perfectly still in a corner, grateful to be able to breathe.”

— Franz Kafka

472. “Sometimes she would hide her eyes behind her hands, and then no words could get through to her.”

— Franz Kafka

473. “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.”

— Franz Kafka

474. “We need the books that affect us like a disaster.”

— Franz Kafka

475. “Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction – that would not be anything to be deplored – but a weakness of conviction.”

— Franz Kafka

476. “Justice has to be motionless or else the scales will waver that and there is no possibility of a correct judgement.”

— Franz Kafka

477. “The true word leads; the untrue misleads.”

— Franz Kafka

478. “It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.”

— Franz Kafka

479. “Sometimes I’m overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching.”

— Franz Kafka

480. “Writer speaks a stench.”

— Franz Kafka

481. “Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don’t accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.”

— Franz Kafka

482. “Leo en Dostoievski el pasaje que tanto se asemeja a ser desdichado.”

— Franz Kafka

483. “How badly I even read. And with what malice and weakness I observe myself. Apparently I cannot force my way into the world, but lie quietly, receive, spread out within me what I have received, and then step calmly forth.”

— Franz Kafka

484. “But now you must give me your hand, an agreement of this sort needs to be confirmed with a handshake.” Will she shake hands with me?”

— Franz Kafka

485. “So now you know what else existed in the world outside of you, before you knew only about yourself!”

— Franz Kafka

486. “At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?”

— Franz Kafka

487. “I have now, and have had since this afternoon, a great yearning to write all of my anxiety entirely out of me.”

— Franz Kafka

488. “Even years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and that consequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.”

— Franz Kafka

489. “The dogs are still playing in the yard, but the quarry will not escape them, never mind how fast it is running through the forest already.”

— Franz Kafka

490. “No, freedom was not what I wanted. Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out prove to be an illusion; the demand was a small one, the disappointment could be no bigger. To get out somewhere, to get out! Only not to stay motionless with raised arms, crushed against a wooden wall.”

— Franz Kafka

491. “The messiah will come when we don’t need him anymore.”

— Franz Kafka

492. “Logic is of course unshakeable, but it cannot hold out against a man who wants to live.”

— Franz Kafka

493. “If they were shocked, then Gregor was no longer responsible.′ This passage betray’s Gregor’s premeditation and points to the idea that Gregor wanted to change into a monstrous vermin- something incapable of working in an office.”

— Franz Kafka

494. “And for a little while he lay still, breathing lightly as if he expected total repose would restore everything to its normal and unquestionable state.”

— Franz Kafka

495. “Forgive me for not having answered you right off, but I still have not developed the technique for making good use of my few hours; midnight comes apace, as now.”

— Franz Kafka

496. “In a certain sense you deny the existence of this world. You explain life as a state of rest, a state of rest in motion.”

— Franz Kafka

497. “You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don’t know.”

— Franz Kafka

498. “It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.”

— Franz Kafka

499. “What is written is merely the dregs of experience.”

— Franz Kafka

500. “Don’t concern yourself about anybody. Just do what you think is right.”

— Franz Kafka