Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “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

202. “The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt.”

— Franz Kafka

203. “We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?”

— Franz Kafka

204. “It’s characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he’s innocent but also in ignorance.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

206. “We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us.”

— Franz Kafka

207. “Illusions are more common than changes in fortune.”

— Franz Kafka

208. “The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.”

— Franz Kafka

209. “Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.”

— Franz Kafka

210. “Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph.”

— Franz Kafka

211. “You misinterpret everything, even the silence.”

— Franz Kafka

212. “I was reading my destiny inside your eyes without knowing it.”

— Franz Kafka

213. “I was wise, if you like, because I was prepared for death at any moment, but not because I had taken care of everything that was given to me to do, rather because I had done none of it and could not even hope ever to do any of it.”

— Franz Kafka

214. “Oh well, memories, said I. Yes, even remembering in itself is sad, yet how much more its object! Don’t let yourself in for things like that, it’s not for you and not for me. It only weakens one’s present position without strengthening the former one – nothing is more obvious – quite apart from the fact that the former one doesn’t need strengthening.”

— Franz Kafka

215. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

217. “I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

219. “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

220. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

226. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

229. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

231. “Since I met you, I’ve felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.”

— Franz Kafka

232. “These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful.”

— Franz Kafka

233. “I waver, continually fly to the summit of the mountain, but cannot stay up there for more than a moment. Others waver too, but in lower regions, with greater strength; if they are in danger of falling, they are caught up by the kinsman who walks beside them for that purpose. But I waver on the heights; it is not death, alas, but the eternal torments of dying.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

235. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

237. “The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.”

— Franz Kafka

238. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

240. “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

241. “The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.”

— Franz Kafka

242. “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

243. “Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

245. “I can never tear myself open wide enough to people to reveal everything and so frighten them away.”

— 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. “But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

249. “Enlightenment comes to the most dull-witted. It begins around the eyes. From there it radiates.”

— Franz Kafka

250. “The gesture of rejection with which I was forever met did not mean: ‘I do not love you,’ but: ‘You cannot love me, much as you would like; you are unhappily in love with your love for me, but your love for me is not in love with you.’ It is consequently incorrect to say that I have known the words, ‘I love you’; I have known only the expectant stillness that should have been broken by my ‘I love you,’ that is all that I have known, nothing more.”

— Franz Kafka