Looking for the best and inspirational Franz Kafka quotes?
Franz Kafka was a famous author who is best known for his novel “The Metamorphosis.” He was born in 1883 to a middle-class family in Prague and had a complicated life. His works often focus on alienation.
His works have been widely translated into English and analyzed by scholars worldwide, but his short stories have remained challenging to interpret. Kafka wrote with a sense of ambiguity that has led to many interpretations of his work, some more literal than others. The Metamorphosis, for example, can be interpreted as an allegory about man’s struggle with modern industrial society or about a man whose body changes while he remains himself. He spent years working as a stockbroker until he started writing full-time in 1912.
Kafka’s writing has also been criticized for its lack of concrete narrative or its development of characters who are mere puppets in their own lives. He is considered one of the key figures in modern literature.
Take a look at this list of his inspiring quotes that will change the way you think and remind you to find happiness in life’s difficulties.
59 Inspirational Franz Kafka Quotes
“It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.’ ‘A melancholy conclusion,’ said K. ‘It turns lying into a universal principle.”
“Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.”
“One must fight to get to the top, especially when one begins at the bottom?”
“Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.”
“There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.”
“One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.”
“A non-writing writer is a monster inviting madness.”
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
“In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.”
“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe … but not for us.”
“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”
“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”
“Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.”
“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”
“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.”
“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”
“They’re talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.”
“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.”
“Most men are not wicked… They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.”
“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”
“Love is a drama of contradictions.”
“Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”
“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”
“In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.”
“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”
“I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.”
“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
“I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.”
“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”
“Believing in progress does not mean believing that progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.”
“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”
“It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free.”
“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.”
“Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle – maybe there is none.”
“You are free and that is why you are lost.”
“There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness.”
“Life’s splendor 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.”
“He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.”
“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”
“Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.”
“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”
“Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.”
“It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.”
“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
“I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.”
“Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”
“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
“One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die.”
“In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
“The right perception of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”
“First impressions are always unreliable.”
“Youth is happy, because it has the ability to see beauty. When this ability is lost, wretched old age begins, decay, unhappiness.”
“Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.”
“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
“There are two main human sins, from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence.”
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”
