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A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka
Age: 41 †
Born: 1883
Born: July 3
Died: 1924
Died: July 3
Aphorist
Claims Adjuster
Diarist
Fabulist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Praha
František Kafka
Kafka
Frozen
Library
Sea
Within
Book
Must

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I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
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So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
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Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing but from their silence, certainly never.
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Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.
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What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.
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Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.
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I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
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it was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: i'm giving up but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit.
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A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
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They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong
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He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.
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The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
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Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.
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It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
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Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.
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Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
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If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
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