Franz Kafka

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and ordinary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet".

"Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have...All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter. Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost".

"They were given the chance of becoming kings or the kings' messengers. As is the way with children, they all wanted to be messengers. That is why there are only messengers, racing through the world and, since there are no kings, calling out to each other the messages have now become meaningless. They would gladly put an end to their miserable life, but they do not dare to do so because of their oath of loyalty".

"He is a free and secure citizen of this earth, for he is attached to a chain that is long enough to make all areas of the earth accessible to him, and yet only so long that nothing can pull him over the edges of the earth. At the same time, however, he is also a free and secure citizen of heaven, for he is also attached to a similarly calculated heavenly chain. Thus, if he wants to get down to earth, he is choked by the heavenly collar and chain; if he wants to get into heaven, he is choked by the earthly one. And in spite of this he has all the possibilities, and feels that it is so; indeed, he even refuses to attribute the whole thing to a mistake in the original chaining".

"If what is supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was indestructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a fake belief".

"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".

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

Life's splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. it is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

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 tother with their sins.

It's often safer to be in chains than to be free.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

I have been a wise man, if I may say so, for I have been ready to die any given minute, but not because I have fulfilled all that was my duty, but because I have done nothing and did not even believe in the possibility of doing anything.

Kafka links

Metamorphosis Constructing Franz Kafka Franz Kafka