Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.”

— Franz Kafka

302. “A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.”

— Franz Kafka

303. “His last words to Robert Klopstock are ‘Kill me, or you are a murderer.”

— Franz Kafka

304. “Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.”

— Franz Kafka

305. “One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark.”

— Franz Kafka

306. “Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

308. “But all remains unchanged.”

— Franz Kafka

309. “So eager are our people to obliterate the present.”

— Franz Kafka

310. “I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.”

— Franz Kafka

311. “From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.”

— Franz Kafka

312. “When one has lived for thirty years in this world and had to fight one’s way through it, as I have had to do, one becomes hardened to surprises and doesn’t take them too seriously.”

— Franz Kafka

313. “For a man under suspicion movement is better than rest, for the man who is at rest can always, without knowing it, be on the scales being weighed together with his sins.”

— Franz Kafka

314. “When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”

— Franz Kafka

315. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

318. “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

319. “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

320. “Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one’s memory.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

323. “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

324. “And it turns out we really do keep writing the same thing. I ask whether you’re sick and then you write about it, I want to die and then you do, I want stamps and then you want stamps, sometimes I want to cry on your shoulder like a little boy and then you want to cry on mine like a little girl. And sometimes and ten times and a thousand times and always I want to be with you and you are saying the same thing. Enough, enough.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

326. “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

327. “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

328. “If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o’clock.”

— Franz Kafka

329. “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

330. “In a way, I was safe writing.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

332. “The main thing, when a sword cuts into one’s soul, is to keep a calm gaze, lose no blood, accept the coldness of the sword with the coldness of a stone. By means of the stab, after the stab, become invulnerable.”

— Franz Kafka

333. “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

334. “The chains that cuff humanity are made of office paper.”

— Franz Kafka

335. “Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.”

— Franz Kafka

336. “I did not fall heavily, nor did I feel any pain, but I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be one’s guard against them. Yet nothing seemed more natural than to lie here on the grass, my arms beside my body, my face hidden.”

— Franz Kafka

337. “One stands painfully pinned against the wall, fearfully lowers one’s eyes to see the hand that pins and with a new pain that makes one forget the old, recognizes one’s own crooked hand, which holds you with a strength it never had for good work. One raises one’s head, again feels the first pain, again lowers one’s eyes and this up and down never ceases.”

— Franz Kafka

338. “The relief of giving in to destruction.”

— Franz Kafka

339. “If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.”

— Franz Kafka

340. “Peaceful moon. I consist only of bones.”

— Franz Kafka

341. “I will cross hundreds of seas and oceans without sinking to reach you, see your eyes and sink completely into their depths.”

— Franz Kafka

342. “The Diabolical sometimes assumes the aspect of the Good, or even embodies itself completely in its form. If this remains concealedfrom me, I am of course defeated, for this Good is more tempting than the genuine Good.”

— Franz Kafka

343. “The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

— Franz Kafka

344. “This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

— Franz Kafka

345. “May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

— Franz Kafka

346. “Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.”

— Franz Kafka

347. “You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.”

— Franz Kafka

348. “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

349. “Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement.”

— Franz Kafka

350. “I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”

— Franz Kafka