Top 500 Franz Kafka Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I like to make use of what I know.”

— Franz Kafka

402. “Look at this, Willem, he admits he doesn’t know the law and at the same time insists he’s innocent.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

404. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

406. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

407. “I had long been running through the darkness, this way and that, guided by nothing but a vague yearning.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

410. “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

411. “48 Belief in progress doesn’t mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

414. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

416. “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

417. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

427. “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

428. “Writer speaks a stench.”

— Franz Kafka

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “In a way, I was safe writing.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Franz Kafka

437. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

439. “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

440. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

442. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

444. “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

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

— Franz Kafka

446. “I am forever chained to myself; that’s what I am, and that’s what I must try to live with.”

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

448. “His growing lack of concern for the others hardly surprised him, whereas previously he had prided himself on being considerate.”

— Franz Kafka

449. “Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.”

— Franz Kafka

450. “For now he must lie low and try, through patience and the greatest consideration, to help his family bear the inconvenience he was bound to cause them in his present condition.”

— Franz Kafka