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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab 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
FrantiĊĦek Kafka
Kafka
Writing
Kind
Stab
Think
Wound
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Wounds
Ought
Books
Read
Book

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The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
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The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
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Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
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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.
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The more horses you yoke the quicker everything will go - not the rending of the block from its foundation, which is impossible, but the snapping of the traces and with that the gay and empty journey.
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The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.
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Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.
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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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Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.
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What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.
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First impressions are always unreliable.
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Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
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Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.
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It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.
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A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
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There is nothing besides a spiritual world what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
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All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
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If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
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In argument similes are like songs in love they describe much, but prove nothing.
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