Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “First of all, I am delighted that you are a vegetarian at heart. I don’t like strict vegetarians all that much, because I too am almost a vegetarian, and see nothing particularly likable about it, just something natural, and those who are good vegetarians in their hearts, but, for reasons of health, from indifference, or simply because they underrate food as such, eat meat or whatever happens to be on the table, casually, with their left hand, so to speak, these are the ones I like.”

— Franz Kafka

452. “Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.”

— Franz Kafka

453. “The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.”

— Franz Kafka

454. “Logic is doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living.”

— Franz Kafka

455. “Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.”

— Franz Kafka

456. “A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that’s exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he’s bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.”

— Franz Kafka

457. “All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart.”

— Franz Kafka

458. “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

459. “Was he an animal if music could captivate him so?”

— Franz Kafka

460. “Above all, he could not stop half way, that was nonsense not only in business but always and everywhere.”

— Franz Kafka

461. “There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.”

— Franz Kafka

462. “The first thing he saw in the small room was a large clock on the wall which already showed ten o’clock.”

— Franz Kafka

463. “The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light.”

— Franz Kafka

464. “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.”

— Franz Kafka

465. “Don’t be too hasty, don’t take somebody else’s opinion without testing it.”

— Franz Kafka

466. “48 Belief in progress doesn’t mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.”

— Franz Kafka

467. “Deceptions are more frequent than changes.”

— Franz Kafka

468. “Now, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call out for help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to suppress a smile at this idea.”

— Franz Kafka

469. “You spend too much time on ephemeras. The majority of modern books are merely wavering reflections of the present. They disappear very quickly. You should read more old books. The classics. Goethe. What is merely new is the most transitory of all things. It is beautiful today, and tomorrow merely ludicrous.”

— Franz Kafka

470. “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

471. “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.”

— Franz Kafka

472. “The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.”

— Franz Kafka

473. “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

474. “Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one’s ability to do so.”

— Franz Kafka

475. “I am a memory come alive, hence my insomnia.”

— Franz Kafka

476. “Oh, God”, he thought, “what a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there’s the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them. It can all go to Hell!”

— Franz Kafka

477. “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

478. “Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out – Samsa was a traveling salesman – hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared.”

— Franz Kafka

479. “There are possibilities for me, certainly, but under what stone do they lie?”

— Franz Kafka

480. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

482. “Writer speaks a stench.”

— Franz Kafka

483. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

486. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

489. “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

490. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

493. “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

494. “You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”

— Franz Kafka

495. “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

496. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

498. “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

499. “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

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

— Franz Kafka