Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

— Franz Kafka

202. “Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let goof the earth.”

— Franz Kafka

203. “I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”

— Franz Kafka

204. “In Kafka’s story “Wedding Preparations in the Country,” Edward Raban fantasizes about splitting into two forms: one, to remain in bed all day, dreaming; the other, to go forth and conduct the business of the world.”

— Franz Kafka

205. “But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.”

— Franz Kafka

206. “Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.”

— Franz Kafka

207. “It follows, perhaps, that we are now both married, you in Vienna, I to my fear in Prague, and that not only you, but I too, tug in vain at our marriage.”

— Franz Kafka

208. “I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”

— Franz Kafka

209. “Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.”

— Franz Kafka

210. “I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason.”

— Franz Kafka

211. “His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.”

— Franz Kafka

212. “One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.”

— Franz Kafka

213. “The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.”

— Franz Kafka

214. “Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.”

— Franz Kafka

215. “I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don’t stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.”

— Franz Kafka

216. “Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”

— Franz Kafka

217. “A false ring of the night bell, once answered – it can never be made right.”

— Franz Kafka

218. “What do I have in common with Jews? I don’t even have anything in common with myself.”

— Franz Kafka

219. “The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.”

— Franz Kafka

220. “I sink into your eyes whenever I’m looking at you.”

— Franz Kafka

221. “I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can’t find the right words. All I can say is: Stay with me, don’t leave me.”

— Franz Kafka

222. “Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.”

— Franz Kafka

223. “It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”

— Franz Kafka

224. “Everyone has his cross to bear.”

— Franz Kafka

225. “I made the remark that I don’t avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.”

— Franz Kafka

226. “What is gayer than believing in a household god?”

— Franz Kafka

227. “If I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I would’ve quit ages ago.”

— Franz Kafka

228. “It’s impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill.”

— Franz Kafka

229. “Everyone carries a room about inside him.”

— Franz Kafka

230. “One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance. A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else.”

— Franz Kafka

231. “The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.”

— Franz Kafka

232. “How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning?”

— Franz Kafka

233. “The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.”

— Franz Kafka

234. “And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.”

— Franz Kafka

235. “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.”

— Franz Kafka

236. “The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

238. “You, who can’t do anything, think you can bring off something like that? How can you even dare to think about it? If you were capable of it, you certainly wouldn’t be in need of it.”

— Franz Kafka

239. “Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.”

— Franz Kafka

240. “My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.”

— Franz Kafka

241. “Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

— Franz Kafka

242. “You too have weapons.”

— Franz Kafka

243. “No one sings as purely as those who inhabit the deepest hell – what we take to be the song of angels is their song.”

— Franz Kafka

244. “Asking questions were the most important thing.”

— Franz Kafka

245. “The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.”

— Franz Kafka

246. “Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.”

— Franz Kafka

247. “I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.”

— Franz Kafka

248. “For humans the idea of freedom is all too often a means of deceiving themselves. And although freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so is the illusion of freedom among the most exalted of illusions.”

— Franz Kafka

249. “I like to make use of what I know.”

— Franz Kafka

250. “Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”

— Franz Kafka